Attention all football fans.
The time is quickly approaching for the season to begin and we have just what you need to host amazing parties all season long, right through all those Bowl games! The Hello My Sweet essential Football Party Set is the perfect accessory for your football parties, and is reusable again and again!
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To go along on top of our super cool DIY football table for our Vintage Football Party, we needed some equally super cool football-ish decor. And what do you normally find at just about every football field? Bleachers of course! This DIY tutorial will focus on some really easy to assemble bleachers that you could use purely as a decorative touch. Or as we did, it being an integral part of plating our delicious food-stuffs.
As with our last DIY post, let us assemble our materials. For the bleachers themselves, we used the ever popular (here at Hello My Sweet) ¼”x2”x4’ poplar wood strips and a small section of a ⅞” wooden dowel. In hindsight, these bleachers would have benefitted from using a wider wood strip than 2” however. Two inches doesn’t leave much room for placing objects on the finished stair, so in the future we would recommend at least 3” wide strips.
Cut the wood strips in half. This will leave you with (12) 2 ft. pieces. If you don’t have access to power tools, you can usually have the home improvement store cut the wood for you. Keep in mind though, there might be an additional charge for this. 12 pieces will build a total of 2 sets of bleachers. 
Take 2 pieces of wood and arrange them in an “L”, this will give you the basic shape of a step. Working with your Loctite, put some of the adhesive on the leading edge of poplar strip, then just press it against the other strip, making sure to make the “L” shape. Work on a surface that you don’t mind getting some adhesive on, or laying down something over the surface you’ll be working on. The nice thing about Loctite is that it can be cleaned up relatively easy with a cloth and some warm water. You are going to repeat this process until you have 6 stairs. I found that I could make 3 “L” shapes, for one set of bleachers, then set them aside and work on the next set of 3. Once you have let the adhesive dry for several hours, take your 3 “L” shapes and arrange them as pictured.
Use some more Loctite to adhere the shapes together and then use the clamps to make sure your bleachers stay in that position while they dry. Let the whole thing dry overnight.
It’s time to add some supports to your bleachers to make sure they stand upright. If you stand your bleachers up with one hand and take a ruler or measuring tape with the other (or have another person help you with this part) then you can measure the distance from the bottom of the topmost woodstrip to the top of whatever surface it’s on. This will give you the measurement of how high your supports need to be. In my case, it was approximately 4 inches high. Your measurements may vary, however.
Once you have your measurement, take the ⅞” wooden dowel and cut 4 pieces to length. This will yield 2 supports per set of bleachers. Once you know your bleachers have had ample time to dry, turn them over and glue 1 support at each corner. Alternatively, you could drill holes and screw the supports in place, but I was attempting to see how difficult/easy it would be to construct these without using a drill and screws. In hindsight, it might actually be faster to use screws instead of an adhesive, since you have to let adhesive dry, but I know some people don’t have access to power tools or have an aversion to using them. Again, let the adhesive dry for a few hours before turning your bleachers back right side up.
They are now ready for painting if you so choose. We decided to go with a color from Krylon call “Brown Boots.” If you do choose to paint AND you decide to use food on them, make sure that nothing edible comes in direct contact with the spray paint. If you can’t get around that, and you still need to put something on the wood directly, then you can cut strips of wax or parchment paper and set them down underneath your food items. You could also opt to apply a food safe poly finish as well.
Want to see more of this awesome Vintage Football Tailgate Party? Click here!
For our Vintage Football Tailgate Party, we didn’t want to use just any ordinary table covering. We wanted the table to look as close to an actual football field as possible. Since we didn’t know quite how to go about doing that, we took to the internets to do our research.
On the Lowe’s website, we found an inexpensive outdoor area rug that closely resembled football field turf. The dimensions of the rug (8x6’) were also perfect to use with our 6 ft. folding table, also from Lowe’s. The rug cost was exactly $18.26.
We also wanted to spray lines and numbers down on the field. We had experimented with using masking tape, but after about one night with the perimeter lines of the “field” down, we awoke the next morning to the tape not adhering any longer and curling up. Scratch that idea! Ideally I had wanted to do the tape method as it would cut down on the time spent prepping the table, but in the end the spray paint method produced superior results, and since they pretty much do the same thing to a real football field, the end result looked even more realistic. Alternatively, you could use craft paint and a paint brush and achieve similar results (without the sprayed down effect) if you prefer not to risk the perils of spray paint.
Before we started, I gathered up the materials that I would need. The rug itself of course and the following:
Another important thing to remember is to make sure you have a space large enough for you to work comfortably. We have an unoccupied apartment beneath ours that I have access to that provided an excellent workspace. An empty garage or even a driveway would suffice as well.
Step One:
Unroll the outdoor rug and lay it upside down on the floor. Place the folding table, unfolded and legs locked into position, top side down onto the underneath side of the rug. (Fig.1) Trim off about 1 foot from either side of the 6 foot side of the rug. (Fig.2) Tightly fold up the edges of the rug and staple (with the staple gun) them to the underside of the table. (Fig.3) With that done all you need to do is to flip the table right side up. (Fig.4) You now have “blank” football field to work with!
Step Two:
Mark out where your lines will go down. (Fig.5) I used the following picture to give me an idea of where the lines needed to be in relation to the field.
With a measurement of 72” long for the table, you can place 9 (7”) sections in the center of the field, and 2 (4.5”) section at either end for the “End-Zones.” You may find it easiest to mark the center of the field first and work your way out on either side. (Measuring 3.5”inches to the left and right of center first, then 7” sections on either side afterwards.) Tape down the end zone and yardage lines with the masking tape.This will serve as your guide to paint.
Step Three:
Using the dark green paint, paint every other 7” strip in the field, starting with the left side and working your way right. (Fig.6) You should end up with 5 dark stripes. You can use craft paint for this (easier to control) or make yourself a stencil that masks off the area you do not want painted so that you can use spray paint. We used spray paint, but if we were to do it again, I would opt for a paintbrush and paint instead, much less room for error! Let this dry before moving onto your next step.
Step Four:
Take the foam core and cut out a line stencil, the same width of the masking tape. You will use this stencil as a guide to paint your white border lines. (Fig. 7) When I was ready to paint a section of line, I would line up the stencil with my masking tape and pull off the tape up through the stencil hole right before painting. Alternatively, you can use a paintbrush and craft paint for this as well, again much more control and less room for painting errors! Let this dry before moving onto your next step.
Step Five:
Time for yardage! Taking the numbers stencil, I cut out the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 0. Take some scrap poster board or cardboard and cut out a border to expand the edges of your stencil and protect from paint overspray. This extra border is not necessary if you plan to paint with a brush instead of spray paint. Making sure to pay attention the direction of the field you are painting on, and using the field diagram picture as a guide, spray down the numbers onto the field. Let those dry for approximately an hour, then stand back and admire your handiwork!
This table cover accompanies our Vintage Football Party, perfect for tailgates, super bowls or just a sports theme birthday!
