Making a chalkboard!

So, this year we are pulling our two youngest children, ages 10 and 8, out of public school to homeschool them. Our 13 year old is staying at his junior high because he’s 13, and he needs to stay at his junior high. I could go into the “why’s” of our decision but I don’t want to because it’s boring to me right now and because I really want to talk about this awesome chalkboard that Steve and I built!!

I have homeschooled before but had a teeny tiny house and this year we have some more space so I wanted a dedicated place for school BUT, I don’t want a “homeschool” house. Do you know what I mean? I don’t want volcanos in the living room and timelines draped all over the place and school junk strewn haphazardly all over my house. When someone enters my home I want it to be cozy not “Hey! I homeschool!!! See?! See?! I homeschool!!! AAAHHHHH!!!” So, I say all of that to say I want form and function. I want to be able to put it away at the end of the day.

This chalkboard is ginormous and takes up a lot of wall space and you can’t really “put it away”  but why would you want to?! I really love how it turned out. I saw a big chalkboard in a Pottery Barn catalog a while back and have yearned for one ever since. Yes, I used the word “yearned” because I did, I really did “yearn”. Anyway, I’m annoying myself…..

Now, here’s the deal kids, I’m not a photographer, as you will clearly see, so these pictures are a little rough. I just wanted to give you a step by step look at how we built this beautiful chalkboard so that you too can enjoy chalk dust in your home and random weirdo pictures.

Okay. Here goes…

Supplies that you need are as follows (oh, that sounds so professional!)

1. Big MDF board 4×8

2. Four 1x3x8 select pine boards. Select just means they have been finished more and they aren’t as rough.

3. 1 1/4 Kreg pocket hole screw pack

4. #8×3/4 flat phillips wood screws

5. Large D-Ring Hangers

6. Chalkboard paint and roller

7. Stain, if you want to stain the frame or you could paint it.

8. 50 lb. self-drilling drywall anchors for hanging the loveliness when finished.

9. Cool “old fashiony” looking pulls.

All of these I bought at Lowe’s except the stain, I already had that. It ran me about $50-$60. Not to shabby. This next list are the tools needed to get your building on!!

1. Drill

2. Kreg Jig mini. I love this thing!

3. Some kind of saw to cut the MDF. Steve used his “chop saw”.

That’s it! Now let’s get going!

How to:

I got a big piece of MDF at Lowes. I just bought the big sheet and Steve cut it down to a 4×6 size. You can have a Lowes person cut it for you for free if you need to. I laid it on some newspaper to keep our garage floor clean….why my garage floor needs to “stay clean”, I don’t know.. anyway..

Then you shake up the chalkboard paint really well and get that little handy dandy paint can getter opener thingy and crack open the can. I went ahead and stirred it up too just to make sure it was all mixed.

Start slapping it on. I put about 4 coats of paint on. It dried pretty quick so it didn’t take long to get all 4 coats on.

Paint your foot. I didn’t realize my foot had that weirdo vein on it… sick.

Here it is after 4 coats of chalkboard paint.

Here are some cat footprints on my freshly painted board… thanks Jasper, that really helped me out. Ok, so I put 5 coats of paint on.

I went ahead and painted the little bit of MDF that I had left with the remaining chalkboard paint. It dried quickly and was absconded by a little ten year old girl and taken to her room never to be seen again.

Now for the frame.

Get out your drill and the Kreg jig. It’s time to build you a frame! I let Steve do this part because I was afraid of messing it up. I could’ve done it but I’m weak and I swooned and he was my hero.

Attach the jig to the board like so… there are instructions included with the Kreg Jig on the proper setup to get the hole depth that you’ll need.

Here are the pretty little pocket holes. I want to shrink down and crawl inside.

Drill all your holes and then start attaching them together to make your frame, like this..

And here is your frame, all sturdy and pretty and ready to be stained or painted.

I used walnut stain and just slapped it on one board at a time making sure to not leave any brush marks and then waited 5-10 minutes before wiping it off.

Isn’t she lovely, isn’t she beautiful!

Here’s the brisket Steve smoked while we were building….. geez.

When the stain is dry, flip the frame over and you can get to attaching the board.

We used the flat wood screws for this little job and put about 6-7 on each side so there weren’t any parts of the board sticking up and it was flush against the frame. Capeche?

Next we added these little beauties to hold the chalk. They’re just some cool pulls we got at Lowe’s and turned them upside down…pretty clever… Ok, I saw it on Pinterest, sheesh!

Then we attached the D-ring hangers to the back sides and we were ready to hang this puppy up!

We measured about a gazillion times, put the Drywall anchors in and said a little prayer and hung it up!

Taaa-Daaaa!!!

It wasn’t crooked! Glory Be!

It wasn’t all the way flush against the wall so we put a couple of long wood screws through the bottom into the studs so the chalkboard wouldn’t bang against the wall when we erased it. Then we ate some brisket.

And there you have it! I am ridiculously excited about using this chalkboard! It only took us a day to build it and hang it up and it looks really pretty.

It didn’t take long for it to be used either. I’m not quite sure what this picture is of or what it means but I’m sure it’s a sign that my 8 year old is a genius.

Happy building!!