Life in the Barbie Dream House: DIY Chalkboard Tutorial!

Hello barbies! I hope you're all having fabulous weekends soaking up this gorgeous fall weather. Aside from a trip to the mall, visiting my parents at their lake house, doing the 2013 Wake County Parade of Homes (look for a post on the fabulous mansions we toured later this week!), a dinner date and watching The Heat with Sandra Bullock (which was hilarious!), we tackled a couple house projects, including this DIY chalkboard project. We already have a chalkboard in our kitchen, but I really wanted a big one for by our front door to do seasonal stuff with. I shopped around, but none were quite big enough for what I had in mind, plus even at the discount stores the larger chalkboards can be pretty pricey. So we did what we always do in these situations - we DIY'd one on the cheap (under $10 total)!

Here's how we did it:
We bought this painting from Goodwill for $6. I picked it because of its size and because I liked the frame. I had my hesitations with the mat (it seemed to complicate the project), but hubby convinced me it was a good feature - and I'm glad he did.

We removed the original hanging wire, cut the back open and removed the painting and the mat, which luckily were attached to each other. We took the glass out and decided to hold on to it for future projects. We used the brown paper from the back and painters tape to cover the white matting while spray painting.

Then we used Rust-oleum Chalk Board spray paint to cover the painting. We bought it at Home Depot for $3.76. The woman at the store advised us to do about 10 separate coats because chalkboard paint needs to be on really thick to work.

We did 4 coats (which used about half the bottle), letting it completely dry between coats, before we did a chalk test. The chalk went on well and wiped off better than it does on my store bought chalkboard, so I declared victory. Hubby put the painting back in the frame using a staple gun, put the original hanging wire back on the back and voila! We had a DIY chalkboard for under $10 - and as always, the coolest part is that we made it ourselves!