She's Crafty

Been wanting a kitchen chalkboard for years, so I made one.  Started with the side panel next to the fridge:

(Okay, so that's the panel next to the oven but I forgot to take a "before" before I started painting.  They're iiiiii-dentical though.)

Bought these:

Both are made by Rust-Oleum.  I researched the heck out of this and Rust-Oleum's chalk board paint is allegedly not the best, but I wanted to be sure it would work with the magnetic primer so I figured I'd sacrifice quality for knowing there wouldn't been a large scale disaster.

The magnetic primer runs about $25.  The chalk board paint is less than ten.  They come in quarts.  I used all the primer, but I have a ton of chalk board paint left over.  I'm turn everything into chalk boards.  Jars, glasses, Wes's forehead.  Everything.

I had them shake the snot out of the primer at Home Depot.  It's paint with metal particles in it, so they all settle to the bottom.  The can is heavy too.  I stirred, stirred, stirred between coats to keep it mixed up.

It took six, count them, six coats of magnetic primer.  Only 30 minutes of drying time between each coat, and then we had to wait 3 hours before putting the chalk board paint on top.  To be honest, it's still not all that magnetic.  Fridge magnets and alphabet magnets stick great, but that Leap Frog animal sound think will not stay. 

Just two coats of chalk board.  The tutorials I found on the intrawebs told me not to do more than that because then you'd lose something on the magneticism and you wouldn't want that.  An hour of drying time between coats.  Overnight to dry, but NO WRITING ON IT FOR 3 DAYS!

Here's what it looked like in process (the primer is pretty much black too):

I realized the top-top would not get used much.  Carrie came up with the idea of putting a "welcome" saying or quote up there and just leaving it.  So, I stole one:

Here's Carrie writing it up there.  My handwriting is atrocious, good thing we keep her around.

And, here's the finished product:

The "quote" is off Local Three's menu, "Sit Deep, Stay Long."  No idea if it's a quote from someone famous (other than the Local Three guys, they're sort of famous here in Atlanta), but I like it.  I think it embodies our home pretty well. 

Anyway, pretty crafty for me.  Yay, weekend projects.