DIY Rustic Chalkboard

Hope you all had a wonderful Father’s Day weekend. We celebrated by getting Mexican take out from our favorite local joint. I took a break from cooking and it was awesome. Just look at Jimmy, he was always meant to be a daddy. 

It’s so sweet to see my dad loving on all his grandchildren. Nora and dad kept cracking up at each other. 

Thought of all my friends without their earthly father. I know days like these are hard and I wanted to remind you that your are so loved and cherished by our heavenly father. He sees you as his precious child, calls you by name, and knows the very number of hairs on your head. You are his beloved!

A couple of weeks ago, Jimmy and I ended up at Home Depot towards the end of our date night. Isn’t there a saying like, “couples who build together, stay together?” Okay, I made that up. It’s been a lot of fun working on projects together and we put our heads together to figure out a solution to one of my DIY fails from a few years back.

When we moved in our home 3 years ago, I saw a cool DIY that Courtney did in her home and it looked like this.

I saw it and decided to do the same thing on a skinny wall next to the pantry. Let’s just say the results were far from what I envisioned. 

My writing ended up looking lop sided and it was a total DIY fail. It was worse because the paint that the previous owners left behind were labeled incorrectly and so this happened. I went to make two trips to the hardware store but could never match the paint correctly as evidenced from my wall. Since we didn’t want to repaint the walls, I ended up sticking a vinyl chalkboard on the wall. It worked well until the vinyl started bubbling up everywhere. Thankfully, we finally figured out a simple and inexpensive solution.

We measured our skinny wall at home and wrote down the dimensions before heading to Home Depot. Once we were there, we decided on these 1×2 6ft pine boards. We only needed 2 since they would be cut. Home Depot also sells these large premade chalkboards that you can cut down to size. I think it was around $10 or less. The whole project was around $25 for a large chalkboard which also included the small screws and command strips.

Go find a friendly worker to help you cut down the chalkboard and wood trim down to your desired size. He will do all the hard work for you! 

Jimmy is making sure the edges line up. Looks good! Man, my hubs is a hunk!

At home, Jimmy measured the back of the chalkboard to figure out where he would screw in the short nails. Make sure your nails are shorter than the thickness of the boards. 

I know it’s hard to look past our crazy, messy garage. Try to focus. Ha! I stained the border trims a weathered gray but you could also paint them any color you want. Jimmy lined the edges up and screwed the nails in from the back of the chalkboard. 

Such an easy project! Jimmy was trying to show off our new project but someone wasn’t having any of that. It’s not always peaches and cream around here, people! 

We used these command strips that work like strong velcro to attach the chalkboard against the wall. These work great and I’ve used them for other projects around the home. 

Here’s our finished result! It fits the narrow wall perfectly and the chalkboard is really great quality. I use chalkboard markers and they wash off with a wet paper towel. I wrote up our summer schedule for the rare days we are inside all day long. We are not strict with the schedule but it gives the kids some structure and we keep it as a flexible guideline. After a few weeks of no schedule, we were all craving a little structure. I will say, there has been more tv and technology time around here since summer began because once again, it’s a flexible schedule and sometimes, mama needs a break! 

Hope you all have a blessed start of the week!

<><yuni

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9