We recently received a copy of the book Paint Can! Children’s Rooms by Sunny Goode. It’s filled with great step-by-step instructions on turning plain ol’ flat boring walls into places filled with imagination. Even though it’s geared towards kids’ spaces, much of it could easily be adopted for grown up rooms, too. One of our favorites in the book is this chalkboard wall. Click through to the next page for step-by-step photos and how-tos!

INSTRUCTIONS FOR CHALKBOARD
From Paint Can! by Sunny Goode, with permission from Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

A Chalkboard doesn’t have to be square or black! You control the design and the color — so create a board that’s unique to your child’s room. I made an irregularly shaped, chocolate brown board here to blend in with the wall color and rope border.

1. Paint the room in the basecoat color. Let it dry for FIVE days.
2. Sketch the outline of your chalkboard border on the wall with chalk.
3. Paint the border outline with chalkboard paint.
4. Roll the chalkboard paint onto the wall inside the border. I recommend two or three coats, letting the paint dry between coats.
5. Once the base is dry, use chalk to sketch the border.
6. Use a #12 round synthetic artist’s brush to apply the border paint.
7. Next, apply the second paint color, here a dark red, top the border.
8. Let the chalkboard and border dry for 48 hours; then condition the board by rubbing the side of a piece of chalk all over the surface and wiping it off. This creates a barrier between the paint and the writing surface so that the chalkboard is erasable. Do not use chalkboard pens, as they are not erasable on painted chalk surfaces.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 6:40 am and is filed under crafting, decorating, living green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.