Chalkboard Door: Before & After

Our house originally had lovely wood doors but when it was renovated (before we purchased it) everything was painted a fresh, clean white. At one point Jason thought he’d like to strip all the doors back to their original wood. These closet doors we were able to just flip around. After Jason started stripping the back of this door, in our spare bedroom, we quickly realized it was going to be more work than it was worth. Since this room belongs to our future kids, I thought it would be a fun solution to repaint the door with Rustoleum chalkboard paint. (Inspiration came from these closet doors.)

I suppose this not a true after because I haven’t actually tried the chalkboard yet. It’s supposed to cure for a couple days before chalk is applied to the whole surface. So really, it just looks like I painted the door black. But I had to blog about something, right?

——————————————

UPDATE:

After 5 days, the surface is supposed to be cured by rubbing a piece of chalk all over the surface of the door. Bye-bye crisp black door. This required an entire stick of chalk and made a huge dust mess!

The instructions say not to use water on the door yet and I don’t have an eraser so I wiped the whole surface with a dry rag. And tested it out. And then wiped it again.

When a full week has passed, it’s ok to use a damp cloth on the door. It didn’t return to the original black. I think it’s because of the rough texture of the paint. Also, I probably should have rinsed the rag and rewashed it several times but, eh.

I wrote my new favorite verse and manta of foster parenting on the back of the door. Writing on the door produced quite a bit of chalk dust on the door. I’m not happy about that. Maybe it’s the quality of the chalk? Or just the nature of the rough chalkboard? In general, though, I like this project and I don’t have any regrets.

Advertisement

6 Responses to Chalkboard Door: Before & After

  1. Amy says:

    well, i love it! i love the idea of chalkboard paint. i need to bookmark all of this in my “inspiration ideas for when i have a home” or maybe start a series of that on my blog so i can keep them in one place! 🙂

  2. SusanV says:

    I can’t wait to hear how well it works! I would totally do that to our doors. 🙂

    I have been having trouble commenting on the last few posts.

  3. SusanV says:

    hm. that one worked. I love your fence, too. I love all your home projects! Its inspiring me to do more things to the house.

  4. […] out stacks of paperwork. We are also in hyper-nesting mode preparing our home with projects (like the chalkboard door, repainting the nightstand, finishing up the fence) and researching and shopping for kid stuff […]

  5. […] a break from Phone Photo Friday to let you know that I updated the post on the chalkboard door to show an after-after and report actually using the […]

  6. […] My favorite big sister, who is also a soon-to-be mama, sent me this fun stuff from my Amazon wish list. I am really excited about this puppy backpack. I can’t wait to see one of our little ones bopping around with it on his or her back. Also, magnetic cabinet locks, outlet covers, and a chalkboard eraser and dustless (!) chalk for our chalkboard door. […]

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: