Since moving into this house I’ve wanted to have a family calendar and menu.  For the past year I’ve debated several ways of doing that, I’ve looked for vintage frames to re-purpose but never found anything that was the right size or that I fell in love with.  Last week I had a light bulb moment – chalkboard wall! Genius (not really my genius, I give all credit to Pinterest). I thought about it for a couple days and decided to just dive in.  I was pretty hesitant at first because my experience with painting walls back in high school wasn’t great, and I have disliked painting walls since then.  But with going back to work I was getting anxious to have a calendar and menu as a sort of family command center to put us all on the same page.

So off to Benjamin Moore I went.  I decided that I was going to paint the wall the same color as I am planning on painting my whole house – white and I am an avid Benjamin Moore lover so I wanted to make sure to buy the paint there to ensure everything would match.  I came home and set to work taping off the pantry door, the baseboards, cupboards, and ceiling.

Then I laid down some plastic to protect the floor from my mess.

Then I began painting.  I used a brush to do around the edges and then used a small foam roller to do the rest.  I don’t know if it was necessary, or maybe I was too scared to mess up and was rolling on too thin of a layer but I used 4 layers of paint for this.  It ended up taking a day and a bit because you have to wait 4 hours between coats.

After letting the paint cure for 3 days it was time to season the wall.  I rubbed white chalk horizontally and vertically all over the wall.  This ended up being the most frustrating and messy! The chalk kept breaking and there was chalk dust EVERYWHERE! Plus a little man scooting around in a walker tracking the dust even further.

So then it was just a matter of getting the calendar and menu up on the wall.  Initially I planned on getting some colored tape to tape off a calendar grid.  I tried that and ended up hating it.  Then after some contemplation and browsing products I came across Chalkboard Markers at Michaels.  It seemed like a perfect solution, you draw on the wall and when it dries it would only come off with a damp rag so you can use regular chalk everywhere else and erase it with a dry cloth without ruining the calendar.  So off to Michaels again to find these markers.  On the package it says that it works best on a non-porous surface but that it can be used with chalkboards.  I was worried that they might stain my wall since it mentioned non-porous surfaces – but it seemed ridiculous to have CHALKBOARD markers that wouldn’t work for chalkboards, and I even discussed it with the store manager who seemed to think everything would be fine.  I bought a pack of 2 (black and white) and a pack of 5 colours but they were very pricey and I was still worried about my wall.  So when I came home I opened the small pack and tested the black marker and my fears were realized.

I was so disappointed! But on the bright side I can return the more expensive pack.  I just have to patch this part with a small amount of paint.  Since the calendar is going to be a more permanent fixture on the wall it wouldn’t be so bad to do the calendar grid with the black marker but since I wasn’t completely sold on the idea I decided to make the calendar with regular chalk.

I’m going to keep it this way for a while and see how much I like it and then decide what to do.

Then I made our menu.

I’m really enjoying it, and the best part is if we get tired of it I just have to wipe it down and it becomes a regular wall!

I’m very optimistic that this will make our lives run a lot smoother when I get back to work!