Chalking It Up

I am still playing catch-up from our tropical weekend, and slowly but surely I am making the final push to get the house decorated for the holidays! For quite some time, I have been wanting a chalk board for the kitchen, not so much for notes and memos, but to add a bit of my own brand of humor to our environs. Not wanting to go out and purchase a chalkboard, and knowing that we have dozens of bins of holiday stuff that I could upcycle, I found this old tavern sign hanging around the basement. Cute, huh? Time for some simple D.I.M! (Do It Myself, because if I don’t, who else will!? ) I really didn’t want to ruin the cute pic on the front, in the event that I would want to use it again. So I flipped it over to the back side, where there was a nice, clean, even surface to work with. You can pretty much transform anything into a chalkboard! Here’s how:

1. Clean, then sand the surface lightly to remove any dust or surface imperfections. Then, wipe it down with a tack cloth (you can pick these up at your local hardware store). The tack cloth is a little sticky, so it picks up all of the extra fine dust that your rag may not.

2. For the first coat, I used Martha Stewart Magnetic Paint, so the surface becomes a magnet board as well. If you don’t want that, then proceed to the next step.

3. In between coats, lightly sand and wipe down with the tack cloth again. See what you missed with that damp rag!?

4. Paint on the chalkboard paint with a sponge brush to avoid lines.

Make sure you don’t leave any streaks or blobs of paint. Wait an hour, apply a second coat. Allow to dry for 24 hours.

5. Take a piece of chalk on its side and rub it all over the board- this “cures” the surface and allows you to write easily on your new board. Now write some funny, witty holiday greeting for all to see and enjoy!