Made To Love: DIY Chalkboard:

I hope everyone had a blessed Christmas!

My kid's are snuggled up in bed, the hubby is at the movies, and I'm snuggled up in one of my kid's Snuggies they received for Christmas. ;-) ...all comfy & cozy.

"Yes, I still have my make-up on from today's festivities." ;-)

So this post is ALL about the DIY Chalkboard's I made for "Family" Christmas gifts this year.

I saw this Chalkboard off one of the blogs I follow, YoungHouseLove, and couldn't wait to make one for myself!!!

Of course, after walking up and down Home Depot, and seeing how much the supplies would end up costing me, I needed to come up with my own version.

I needed to make 5 of these, so it would have added up.

I ended up buying Oriented Strand Plywood Board because of the cost, but I would suggest buying a smoother version. This does work just fine, but it has a bit of a rough surface because of the layering flakes of wood.

I also went with Wood Fencing for the frame instead of 1x6" boards. By doing so, I saved about 1/2 the price, and it still looks great!

The very first thing I did was paint all of the plywood boards with Chalkboard paint, because that needed drying time in between each coat of paint. I gave each board 3 coats of paint.

A little funny story about the Chalkboard paint...

I was able to paint 3 boards before running out of paint.

((This was a can of paint I already had on hand, so it was 1/2 empty to begin with.))

So I called my husband up to ask him if he could bring me home another can of paint. I didn't even think about having him check to see what color Chalkboard paint it was.

So he comes home with the paint, I open it up, and it's GREEN!!!

The paint I originally had was Black!

It was the night before Christmas Eve, and I was not about to go exchange it out!

So 3 of my boards were painted black, 2 were painted green! =)

While that was all drying, I worked on staining the wood...

I love how it turned out! Do you see the Peacock feather-like knots in the wood? Love it!

Okay, here's where things started going wrong...and you know, sometimes that happens with my projects. In my head, I know exactly what I'm doing, and how it's going to turn out...and in reality, not so much. ha ha

I bought too short of screws, and when I went to pick up the board, the plywood came right apart from the frame. My Mom happened to be sitting outside watching me, and so it was actually kind of funny. But by then, it was now Christmas Eve, and I had NO time to run back out to buy longer screws, and so I had to improvise with what I already had.

I had some Backer-On Board Screws that were just a tad bit too long, so my Dad cut those down for me, and I used those along with some wood glue.

Yes, it may not have been the "correct" screw to use in this situation, but it worked! ha ha

Okay so, I did not know this until my Dad started helping me out...but depending on the kind of wood, in this case, it's best to pre-drill a hole in the wood first before actually drilling in the screw. I did not do this step the first time, and I ended up cracking the wood.

In the below picture, you can see the wood glue and the screws sitting inside the already pre-drilled holes...