Sometimes it annoys me that almost none of our furniture matches. The rest of the time I try to convince myself it’s because we’re cool and eclectic!
:: smile ::
The truth is…we just can’t afford to buy sets of furniture.
So we’ve picked up pieces here and there. Think yard sales, from family, craigslist and free cycle even! And of course, not a stitch matches! Weeeeell, I’ve seen all these ideas floating around Pinterest. And I was inspired and thought of a super-cool-cheap-skate way to make at least some of my furniture match!
Allow me to introduce you to the magic powers of blackboard paint!
I convinced the Hubster to buy me a little pail at Home Depot for under ten buckaroos. Supposedly you can find it at Walmart too. Ours didn’t have it in stock. Also, I really wanted the spray paint kind but I just wasn’t patient enough to order it online. So I went old school with the primer and the brushes.
In just a couple hours on a sunny Sunday afternoon (between church and Special Olympics) I worked on making our School/Play/Therapy room tables match.
I used left over warm white on the bottoms and the tops became blackboards! Warm white looks reaaaally good against the blackboard paint.
Wah-lah!
Practical and Cute!
Plus, they all match without spending a fortune to buy a new set! Makes me feel warm n’ fuzzy on the inside.
Since chalk is wipe-from-the-walls-because-Trevy-WILL-color-on-them-friendly, I’ve been leaving a little bowl of multi-colors in the middle of the table so they can create at will. It’ll also come in handy next school year for writing spelling lists, practicing cursive and all the other wonderful ways we can think of to play with our new blackboard tables!
The only bummer is that it needs to be washed with a wet washcloth. A regular eraser just doesn’t do the job. But otherwise we’re in LOVE with our new tables!
Just this morning I caught my budding ar-teest drawing an American Flag in honor of America’s Birthday!
The best news is - you’ll probably have some left over to play with too! Here are some fun projects you can try til’ the pail runs dry:
- Garden Chalkboard Puppets by Nurture Store
- A New Chalkboard from a Yard Sale Find by The Artful Parent
- Re-purposed Chalk Table by Creative Playhouse
- Make Your Own Chalkboard Art Bins by The Artful Parent
- Martha Stewart’s ideas of creative ways to use chalkboard paint
…danielle
I just found your blog. You have some great ideas on here. I like the idea of using chalkboard paint to unify tables. Yardsaling is awesome. I agree that sometimes it's annoying that nothing matches perfectly, but it's great that the mis-matchy antrhopologie style is so in right now :) I just try and look at it that way. One of my favorite yard-saling resources is http://www.yardsalesearch.com. It maps out a route for you based on the local yard sales. I think they even let you advertise your own yard sales on there for free too. Just wanted to pass that along!
ReplyDeleteThis is great! I always wanted to paint a chalk board wall, but my hubby wasn't in agreement.
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting me at A Season for All Things. Glad you found the oatmeal packets. I'm your newest follower (and fellow homeschooler) and look forward to finding more terrific ideas. ~ Ellen