Martha…again

Martha, the crafty voice in my head, was unsatisfied with my apron making. It wasn’t enough for her. She needed more.

Once again I was out on pinterest.com (I never learn) and I saw these photos of walls with chalkboards painted on them. And cabinets with chalkboards on them & one of them had some comment about it being DIY chalkboard paint & you can use whatever color you like.

I’ve long thought of getting some chalkboard paint for the inside of a couple of my kitchen cabinets. I want to be able to write recipe ingredients on them when I am cooking because I really have no space to put the book anywhere near where I prep & cook & end up wandering all around my kitchen with every new step. But I didn’t want black. Green might be acceptable. Only nowhere around here sells chalkboard paint in any color. Lowes claims on the website to stock it at both the Lowes ‘near’ me, but neither of them actually stock it. So it’s just been one of those things on the mental list that I check on randomly from time to time when in Lowes.

But the comment linked up to the DIY instructions.

They were on Martha’s site! So of course Martha in my head was overjoyed!

And the thing is…painting is actually sort of do-able for me. Much more so than sewing or making floral wreaths.  I *like* to paint and the inside of a couple cabinets is a reasonable size. So I went to Lowes Sunday and got my supplies.

A pretty, dark purple. I mixed a cup of it with 2 tablespoons of the unsanded grout.

Then I taped up the cabinets. I’m only painting the bottom halves because that is as far as I can reach to write stuff.

Let me just say here that I had no idea how much surface a cup of paint would cover. I assumed it would do both doors for two coats, the end.

Then I painted it on, thickly

But wow there was a lot of paint left and the container had no lid and it would be wasted paint unless I found something else to paint.

Dangerous times.

First I painted another cabinet

Then I decided to paint an area in our bathroom. Why? No clue. I have no idea what I might want to write on a chalkboard in my bathroom. I’ve never felt it was lacking a chalkboard, but the urge to not waste paint was strong and my bathroom is pretty much the only other room in the house where purple paint would not clash horribly.

Probably a good thing really.

Then I sat back & watched the paint dry

And it was every bit as exciting as I was led to believe it could be.

Then, once several hours passed, I removed the blue tape. Martha herself (not the voice in my head) suggests at this point that you sand the paint with 150 grit sandpaper to smooth it out. I disagree with this. The uneven bits were from the wood underneath. A better suggestion would have been to sand BEFORE painting. Also, sanding caused my paint to rip & peel and I had to peel off all the paint & redo the one door I sanded. The next step is to rub the painted area all over with a piece of chalk and then wipe it off to prime it. Then you have a chalkboard

Mayhem wanted mac & cheese for dinner. Havoc decided to remind me he prefers something else.

I peeled the tape off the bathroom square & tried sanding it so see if it was an issue of wood versus paint background & the same thing happened. Don’t sand the chalkboard. Learn to live with the ‘personalization’ the texture gives it.

You can see where I had to touch up spots.  All I need now is to measure the thing & go buy some trim pieces at Lowes to frame it. They’ll even cut them to length with the 45 degree miters for me.

Sound so easy doesn’t it?

We retiled the bathroom floor in April 2002 & broke a couple baseboards when we pulled them off. All we needed to do was measure the length & take a piece of trim to match to Lowes.

Our bathroom Feb 1, 2011.

Yeah…starting & doing projects is easy. It’s that finish work that gets us every time.