Yes, as oddly as it sounds, I restored this sign. AKA, I repainted the the letters since they were hardly noticable. I masked the white area all with tape and left the areas that were supposed to have the red and sprayed red over the sign. When the paint dried i peeled off the tape and sprayed a clear coat over it and this is my result! It's far from perfect, but I'm impressed.
I'm kinda regretting tossing this sign. I didn't like the way the paint job came out so I tossed it. I could have just spraypainted the whole thing white and then redone it with vinyl letters...
No but I enjoy what I have (well, they're all stored in my shed lol). If I found a sign on the ground I might take it depending on what kind of sign it is and if it's in a relatively remote area...
Yeah there's a few interesting ones around my house...a couple floated right up on the beach in front of my house like a plywood yellow diamond GRADER WORKING sign! Found some interesting things on that beach after storms...a few Japanese lightbulbs too (huge ones the size of a 1000w MH lamp but were incandescent).
One of my neighbors has a real red octagonal STOP sign, ironically in a place without cars/roads! They display it in plain sight, too, and I joke about it all the time.
Ah cool. I have a real stop sign too, it's a big one, 36" across. And reflective too! My grandpa gave it to me when I was three. In my old house it was nailed to a big tree in out backyard. When we moved to our new home, it got nailed to the fence here. Now it's in the shed with all the other signs. As you can see, it's a little scraped-up since it was a knock-down. It came off a Massachusetts freeway ramp and was on a long galvanized steel U-channel pole. Actually, many of my signs were on poles when I got them but my parents never let me keep them.
I think sign collecting can be fun too...I'd like to find some of those old-school-looking HIGH VOLTAGE sings...they'd be pretty fitting for a lighting enthusiast's house.
And I like just plain funny signs...for example...THIS HOUSE GUARDED BY SHOTGUN 3 NIGHTS/WEEK...YOU GUESS WHICH THREE! Or PROTECTED BY SECOND AMENDMENT SECURITY...or a picture of a dog's head and something like I CAN MAKE IT TO THE GATE IN 13 SECONDS...CAN YOU?
And don't even get me started on bumper stickers...I have some pretty classic political ones from my mom's estate...
LOL those are some pretty funny signs, though I'm more of a fan of "real" signs over novelty ones (though I like novelty signs that are made like real signs, ie reflective, made with FHWA fonts and on 0.80 gauge sheet aluminum instead of steel with conventional fonts).
I like "real" signs too, especially if they came from somewhere.
I've considered making tags for some of my fluorescent lights telling what lamps to use...something like NOTICE-USE 40 WATT T-12 LAMPS ONLY; "ENERGY SAVING" 34 WATT T-12 OR 32 WATT T-8 LAMPS MAY CAUSE POOR PERFORMANCE AND BALLAST FAILURE for some of my older shoplights. (Both old school LPF and vintage PCB-laden HPF ballasts.
The same neighbor with the stop sign also has one made of actual metal and with reflective yellow, with black letters that says something to the effect of CAUTION-OBNOXIOUS SOUNDS AND NOXIOUS SMELLS MAY LINGER IN THIS AREA. I think it's supposed to be on a bathroom door or something, but why not under an (albeit currently unused) generator exhaust pipe?
I also have some old road signs lying around. I find they complement my signal collection pretty well. Most of mine are the real deal, old decommissioned highway and traffic signs. I prefer real signs too, I find the decorative traffic signs they sell in stores to be a bit tacky especially the ones with non reflective sheet steel and non FHWA fonts.
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One of my neighbors has a real red octagonal STOP sign, ironically in a place without cars/roads! They display it in plain sight, too, and I joke about it all the time.
And I like just plain funny signs...for example...THIS HOUSE GUARDED BY SHOTGUN 3 NIGHTS/WEEK...YOU GUESS WHICH THREE! Or PROTECTED BY SECOND AMENDMENT SECURITY...or a picture of a dog's head and something like I CAN MAKE IT TO THE GATE IN 13 SECONDS...CAN YOU?
And don't even get me started on bumper stickers...I have some pretty classic political ones from my mom's estate...
I've considered making tags for some of my fluorescent lights telling what lamps to use...something like NOTICE-USE 40 WATT T-12 LAMPS ONLY; "ENERGY SAVING" 34 WATT T-12 OR 32 WATT T-8 LAMPS MAY CAUSE POOR PERFORMANCE AND BALLAST FAILURE for some of my older shoplights. (Both old school LPF and vintage PCB-laden HPF ballasts.
The same neighbor with the stop sign also has one made of actual metal and with reflective yellow, with black letters that says something to the effect of CAUTION-OBNOXIOUS SOUNDS AND NOXIOUS SMELLS MAY LINGER IN THIS AREA. I think it's supposed to be on a bathroom door or something, but why not under an (albeit currently unused) generator exhaust pipe?