DIY - Magnetic Chalkboard

When we first looked at the house we are in now I fell in love with this huge chalkboard they had hanging in their kitchen. But the owners took it with them and so we were left with this....

A big empty space in the wall and a longing to have a chalkboard there again.

So we went to Menards determined to make our own. Here are some of the supplies we bought...

The supplies total cost was around $50 and we thought it would only make 1 board....but we have enough left over that we are going to do another one for Isaac's room!!

We bought a sheet of Melamine to use for the board. It is lightweight and affordable.

While I got busy painting the 3 coats of magnetic primer, Dominic worked on building the frame...

Once the magnetic primer had set for at least 4 hrs after the final coat I was able to do the 3 coats of the chalkboard paint. I would suggest if you are going to try this that you follow the directions on the paint packaging.

It is hard to see but this is how it looked after all the painting had dried.

Once Dominic glued on the frame and it had dried we had to "condition" the chalkboard.

Basically it is just using a piece of chalk and rubbing it across the entire board. Don't do this step indoors...or with blue sidewalk chalk - you will have a mess all over your floor. And if you don't listen to my warning and have to clean up the mess as I did...don't use your Swiffer Vac to do it - you will have another mess to deal with after that!! :)

And once it is conditioned and erased it was ready to hang...

I am so excited because it is perfect for the space and was much cheaper than buying one pre-made.

I am not sure if you can tell in the photo - but at the top right it says "Thank you Jody". Yesterday Gabriel got a couple of pieces of mail and he was so excited he ran out and yelled at the mail woman "Thanks mailman"...so I told him that we should find out her name and it is Jody. So he went inside and wrote "Thank you Jody" on the chalkboard because he was so happy she brought him mail! :)

What was the last DIY project that you tackled?!