Chalkboard Entryway

Friends! I’mmm baaaaaccccck! Didya miss me? I’ve certainly missed you! Dwell Beautiful took a bit of a break these past couple weeks as hubby and I enjoyed the holidays with family and then went to Maui to kick 2015 off right! 🙂 What. A. Dream. Now I’m back in the chilly PNW temperatures and ready to get this blog back on it’s feet! As you can tell, we have a brand new blog design that I spent hours working on- what do you think? I’m really pleased with how it turned out! A new blog design for new & exciting blog projects! 🙂 For my first project back, I’m bringing you something I’ve been meaning to do FOR.EV.ER…. aka since we moved into our house – add a chalkboard entryway wall.

chalkboard entryway
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After buying our home last November, I realized that this blank entry wall:

chalkboard entryway

would be perfect for a fun bit of color and functionality! After a lot of debate, I decided to go with a chalkboard entryway wall. Yes, yes, I know that they are supposedly “overdone” or a “dying trend” but I still love chalkboards and think they are a fun and functional way to add visual interest to your home. So sue me! (But seriously, don’t sue me.) I had the paint sitting in my craft room for months and months just begging to be used, but I just never got around to it. So what better way to start the new year than with crossing a big project off my to-do list!

I started off by using some masking tape and creating a straight seal around the molding on my wall.

chalkboard entryway

Next was the messy part. If you know me, you know that any time I use paint, even if it’s watercolors or a teeny-weeny tube of acrylic paint, I somehow manage to drip it everywhere. Go me. I only managed to trip over the paint can 3 times (luckily it didn’t tip over… phew!) and only got a couple drips on the tile, which is big progress for me. For this project I used Rust-Oleum Chalkboard Paint – it’s gotten lots of rave reviews by lots of bloggers so I decided to give it a go!

chalkboard entryway

Pro-tip: Make sure you give this paint a GOOD stirring! My can had been sitting for a long time so the thick black stuff was kind of blobbed at the bottom and the rest of the paint was kind of watery with a blue-ish tinge. Mix that bad boy up for the best results!

I just used a regular paint roller for coating my wall and a sponge brush for getting in the corners and edges. After the first coat, my paint looked like this:

chalkboard entryway

The first coat goes on pretty thin, at least it did on my wall, so I gave it a second coat and she was good to go. Two – three coats are recommended for the best coverage and durability! The can says to wait 3 days before you do anything to your chalkboard wall, but I waited only 2. I like to live dangerously.

The next step is to ‘season’ the chalkboard, which basically rubbing the flat side of a piece of chalk over the entire thing like so:

chalkboard entrywayOnce you’ve rubbed the entire wall with chalk (I used about 3 pieces since I kept dropping and breaking them…) Then you can rub in the chalk with your hand or a cloth to make your board have a nice, even, pretty surface 🙂

Now my wall is ready to party! I knew I wanted to have a welcoming message to greet all our guests – it is an entryway after all! So I quickly sketched out what I wanted my message to look like.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006BAEI6/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0006BAEI6&linkCode=as2&tag=dwellbeaut0e-20&linkId=SUGNMNNUY775LJX4">Rust-Oleum Chalkboard Paint</a><img src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=dwellbeaut0e-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0006BAEI6" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />

I just free-handed everything and looked at a couple fonts for reference, but if you don’t feel comfortable doing this, my friend Nicole at Meet the B’s, has a super easy transfer method for putting printed text on any surface! I did a rough outline in regular chalk so I could easily rub it out if I didn’t like the way it looked. Once I felt it was what I wanted, I whipped out my handy dandy chalk paint pen and went over my lines!

chalkboard entryway

Since this entryway is also where we sort our mail and do some planning, I also knew I wanted to add some functionality to this space. Enter a hand-drawn calendar! I achieved this by using a right angle ruler and tracing straight lines to form boxes for the days of the week and a space to write the month in.

chalkboard entryway

chalkboard entryway

To help cut clutter and improve organization, I nailed in some pretty little tins for sorting things like outgoing mail, things to sort, coupons, reminders, and more! I got these tins from Pick Your Plum a while back and I’ve been saving them just for this project! These tins sure are glad to be out of the bottom of my craft closet and finally on the wall being useful!

chalkboard entryway

After adding a few more final touches and doodles, the last thing I added was a place to hold chalk for when I wanted to change up the calendar or for extra doodling! My friend, Amanda at Dwelling In Happiness, had the brilliant idea to use scrabble tile holders for keeping chalk in place and I followed suit because it’s an absolutely BRILLIANT idea!

chalkboard entryway

And here is my finished chalkboard entryway!

chalkboard entryway

I seriously did a happy dance when I finished. I lurve lurve LURVE how it turned out and I feel like I’m one step closer to having a ‘big girl’ house. I left the bottom half empty so it’s free for doodles when my 3-year-old nephew, Luke, comes over!

I wanted to add some color to the space and let guests know who we are and what we are all about, so I added a canvas of one of our favorite wedding photos 🙂

chalkboard entryway

chalkboard entryway

You can see a little peek of my travel gallery wall in the background! 🙂

chalkboard entryway

chalkboard entryway

chalkboard entryway

chalkboard entryway

What do you think about chalkboard walls? Are they a tired trend or do you still love them? Sound off in the comments below!

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