Chalkboard Frame

To finish off the kitchen, I had a fun project to fill this empty space.

Previously, there were three tiny little plaques, but it needed something a little more… grand. My sister-in-law just completed at cool chalkboard piece for her mom and Ansen said, “hey, why don’t we do something like that.” So I got to work looking. After visiting about 3 or 4 resale stores, I finally found a beautiful frame for $5.

I brought it home and asked Ansen what he thought! He was pretty concerned about the… um… horses. As beautiful as they are, I had to remind him of my intention. It was relatively easy to do, but I didn’t have a few bobbles along the way.

To begin, primer. I primed the frame and the glass. I was concerned about the chalkboard paint sticking to the glass that came in the frame, so I gave it a few coats of the primer to help with that. I should have done a second coat of primer on the frame because I ended up doing about 4 coats of paint on it to get it fully covered.

After a few coats of chalkboard paint. I ended up with something like this:

It wasn’t too bad, however, it was incredibly bumpy. So I sanded it just a bit. But then it knocked off some peaks that were actually primer, so there were some little white spots popping up. I ended up sanding it again, painting it, sanding and then painting one last time. I’m actually pleased with the final product… it just took a bit more work. I guess it pays to be a little perfectionistic.

I chose not to condition it this time around (though I did the first time). Instead, I chose to leave the dark black paint un-chalked and I’ll just use a wet paper towel to clean it each time I decide to change it. In the future, I might change my mind about that, but I suppose that’s easy enough to do. Anyways, I think it’s perfect for our space. I love it!

I also had a hard time finding RED chalk to tie in the red accents with our blue walls. But luckily, Crayola makes a big bucket of sidewalk chalk that does include every color in the rainbow. Hopefully when I get the chance to hit a craft store I can find what I’m really looking for. Either way, this is such a fun way to spruce up our kitchen!