Spice Rack Meets Chalkboard
On Saturday morning’s to-do list, chalkboard paint was among our items to pick up for the day. Seems odd right? In case you were curious about what we “needed” it for, check out the new and improved door to our spice rack.
Those of you who’ve been over to our house for dinner have probably seen us running back and forth between the oven (or grill in Chad’s case) and the cabinet that looks like it would have an old ironing board in it. The previous homeowners were actually pretty ingenious when they removed the old ironing board and added a few small shelves to convert the cabinet into a spice rack. It’s a great storage solution for our small kitchen and when new guests come over they almost always ask what’s in there.
It was fine as it was, all shiny and white, but we’ve been trying to figure out a unique way to incorporate a chalkboard into our kitchen without just buying one to hang on the wall. A little tape, a little paint and viola, we have a chalkboard spice rack. The cabinet door is in the center of our kitchen so neither of will miss a note from the other one, but it’s small enough not to overpower the room.
Here’s the skinny in case you want to do this in your kitchen:
We used Valspar Chalkboard Paint from Lowes for around $13 a can. The instructions said to mix really well before using, so we just asked the clerk at the paint counter to use the machine to shake it for us before we left the store. On a side note, if black isn’t your thing check out a Benjamin Moore paint store. We dropped by our True Value before heading to Lowes to see what they offered and while they didn’t stock black chalkboard paint they do carry clear chalkboard glaze. Meaning for about $15 you can turn any paint job into a chalkboard with a few coats of glaze. Awesome idea we thought – except we didn’t already have black paint so we would have had to buy two products.
Our second step was to clean and tape of the edges of our door. The cabinet door had a nice panel front, that made deciding where to paint really easy. We just used the tape to keep our edges clean. The instructions also recommend sanding or priming the surface you’re painting if it’s not smooth already. Ours already had a few coats of white latex paint so we skipped this step.
It took about three coats to finally get the coverage we needed. As soon as it was all dry we peeled the tape off and enjoyed our finished product.
We had to buy a quart of chalkboard paint, and barely put a dent in it. So we’ve already started thinking of other ways to use the paint without adding chalkboard walls to every room of the house (since neither of us are 5).
So far we’ve come up with a fun way to recycle old jars. If we think a jar can be used for something else like storing nails or screws, etc. we usually clean it up and keep it under the kitchen sink for future use. So we pulled out an old pepper jar out from under the sink, threw some painters tape on it and made a nice reusable label for our jar. We put flowers in the jar for blogging purposes, but our chalkboard labels will probably get more use keeping our basement organized. Tip: If you do this at home, make sure to use really thin coats of paint on the glass and make sure they are COMPLETELY dry before applying secondary coats. If the base coats are too thick or not dry enough they will peel right off.
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Spray on chalk board paint is also great for glass, you can get it at walmart and it’s good for small jobs. I have a chalk board in our kitchen that I made out of an old window they took from our bathroom when the remodeled it. It seems to adhere to the glass really well, and has never chipped off. The kids are pretty hard on it too, lol. As far a another idea for your chalk board paint, I saw a magazine article (I think in Martha Stewart or RealSimple) where the painted a large calendar on the wall of the office with chalk board paint, of course paint the grid in your choice of color but then every month they just wipe away the old and fill in the squares for the next month. It was huge and almost doubled as an art piece. They may have used the chalk board glaze because the squares were different shades of gray. Anyway, it was cool and the door looks great! Keep up the good work!
I value the blog article.Really thank you! Want more.
I love this idea, we have some doors to put up between our kitchen and pantry and are thinking about making a chalkboard on them. Thanks for the inspiration :-)