Pinterest Pin Success: A Chalkboard Wall

I am a bit of a Pinterest addict. I have been on Pinterest for two years now, and have so many pins that sometimes I have to go back and look at my boards to see what is there, and my Crafts board is so full that I doubt I will ever have time to complete all of the things there. I do attempt to follow through on a lot of them, though, and most recently I decided to try out the Martha Stewart "recipe" for chalkboard paint. There are all sorts of versions of this pin, so I read through a couple of them and decided to just go for it. I love that you can make the paint in any color, but I was boring and just did black this time. When our kiddos move into their new bedrooms this spring, though, they are getting some fun-colored (and possibly fun-shaped!) chalkboard walls in their new rooms.

Basically, the recipe I followed called for one cup of regular wall paint (I used up some leftover black I had from painting my doors), and two tablespoons of unsanded grout. By the way, when I told the guy at Home Depot why I needed unsanded grout, I am pretty sure he thought I was a lunatic. He certainly didn't believe me that I could make chalkboard paint with it, and twice he tried to direct me to the "real" chalkboard paint. So anyway, I read that just dumping the grout into the paint results in clumps, so I made a "slurry" with the grout and a couple of tablespoons of water first, then added that to my paint. That's it! So easy. It took me longer to measure and tape off the area I wanted to paint than it took to mix it up.

I have had this big blank space above my coffee station in my kitchen that I was just dying to do something with, and a chalkboard wall seemed like the perfect fit for it. Now I can write messages, grocery lists, menus, etc. It is too high for the kids to play with, but I am glad I experimented with this one first, because I will do a couple of things differently when I make them their own. First of all, I ended up using a brush to paint this one in my kitchen - next time I will get a small roller. Also, I did two coats of the chalkboard paint, but I think it could have used one or two more. The two coats covered the area fine, but I think if it was a little bit thicker the texture would be better.

Here are some shots of the before, during and after (I apologize for the small pics - Blogger is not letting me adjust the size at all):

My 3x3 taped-off square.

After one coat of paint.

Voila - chalkboard wall! (I don't normally have a tutu and a stuffed snake on my fridge - they were in toy time-out.)

Yay! I love my new chalkboard wall!

I didn't have chalk on hand, so I had to pick some up when I was at the grocery store. All they had was some cheap Crayola chalk, and I am not too thrilled with it. It breaks easily and doesn't have the best consistency on the board either. I will have to check around to find some really good chalk. I seasoned the board before writing on it by dampening the chalkboard and then rubbing a coat of chalk all over it before wiping off. It doesn't seem to get completely clean, but I am okay with that as I like the sort of vintage look it has. This was really fun and super easy to do - I will definitely do it again with a couple of minor adjustments. Let me know in the comments if you attempt it too!