chalkboard.

guess what?? my sister, her husband, and her two little ones (three if you count the one swimming around in her belly!) are coming to visit me in a couple weeks! a girl in one of my classes was telling me that she has a chalkboard wall in her house, and she said that when she babysits, the kids love it! so, when the dates of my family's visit became official back in february, i knew just what to do. i want my niece and nephew to have fun here. i decided to make a chalkboard wall for the renter! we can paint our walls as long as we paint them back white when we move out, but our walls are textured, so i took the easier route. 

 jon and i measured the wall that we wanted the chalkboard on and decided on a size for the board itself. we wanted it to take up most of the wall, and still look okay and somewhat centered even though there is a weird light switch in the way. then we went to home depot and bought a $9 sheet of plywood and a $15 bucket of black chalkboard paint. the worker cut the plywood down to the size we wanted and we brought it home.

 it was so easy to paint. i just propped it up on a bucket, opened the garage and painted a coat every time i had a spare 10 minutes. i think i did about 5 coats. i wanted it to be thick because, as you can see, the plywood is very textured. it felt smooth enough at the store, but when i brought it home, i realized that it would be weird to write with chalk on it. i would recommend getting a nicer, smoother piece of wood instead of plywood. we got that because it was the cheapest!

 a few coats later, i put a piece of chalk sideways and colored the entire board, then erased it. it worked! here is my cute guy hanging it up. you can see that it isn't centered on the wall, but it still looks good. 

 i was going to frame it with molding, but i like how it looks with no border. I'm glad that i painted the edges even though i wasn't planning on having them exposed. it brings interest into our front room and gives guests a little area to doodle on. it has been fun! surprisingly enough, the grooves and imperfections in the plywood haven't proved to be a problem! it's not as smooth as a school chalkboard, but it's easy to write and draw on it.

can't wait for my favorite little kidlets to come and try it out for themselves!