chalkboard + board&batten

it's been over a month since my last post.  i know this because i just got called out on facebook by a friend.  you know who you are KCF!  love ya.  i blame it on instagram.  it has turned me into a lazy blogger.  

but i have not been totally lazy in the last month...

we worked on a pretty decent sized project the first couple of weekends in january.  i have had two images pinned on my 'home ideas' pinterest board for a while  and it was time to get moving on them.  chalkboard and board/batten have been all the rage on blogs and pinterest.  hopefully, i'm not too far behind the trend.

we have a quirky little nook in our kitchen.  we have a second set of stairs that leads up to our bonus room and it makes a zig zag {does that even make sense?}.

 it's a hard place to photograph.  and one of the darkest little corners of our house.

we needed a larger space to drop coats and bags so i thought this area could accommodate that.  it's not far from the back door and practically unused. we had a metal coat rack from hobby lobby but it wasn't cutting it.  with all the backpacks, purses, lunchboxes, work bags and coats, it just wasn't big enough.

i thought it would be the perfect place to use both of these ideas.

  Source: eighteen25.blogspot.com via courtney on Pinterest

                                                       

                                                                Source: thenatos.blogspot.com via courtney on Pinterest

originally, i had our carpenter price out the board + batten when he was working on our kitchen remodel.  for the labor & materials, it was going to be $500.  i wanted the project done but couldn't part with the $500 to do it.  womp.womp.

so we decided to take on this project ourselves.  and it involved the rental of a nail gun.  sounds like fun, right?

the first step was the easiest so i started there.  i had leftover paint from the preschool christmas gifts so step one was free.  and free is always a nice place to start.

i used camryn's sidewalk chalk to prime the chalkboard.  much faster than regular white chalk.

it makes a huge mess.  but that was it - paint, prime, done.

now on to my favorite part.  i won't give a full board+batten tutorial because i am no expert.  i will share a few things i learned.

cutting:  i had lowe's make 90% of the cuts for us.  i measured and took my list to the store.  it saved us a ton of time.

patching & spackling:  the pre-paint prep {say that 5 times fast} was a pain but made the paint job look 100x better.

caulking:  i finally made friends with the caulk gun.  caulking is not one of my gifts but the gun and some wet paper towels made it much easier, neater and faster.  there were several gaps between the sheetrock and wood and the caulk made a nice finished edge.

painting: i lined the paint tray with aluminum foil.  once i was finished painting, i peeled it back and tossed it.  no cleanup = awesomeness.

here is a photo of the primed wall.

my little helper supervising everything before bedtime.

we bought the hooks from lowe's and attached them.  and that's it.  
we couldn't wait to get all of our stuff hung up.

i like having some lower hooks so camryn can hang up her own coat and backpack.

i added a plastic basket from land of nod to hold hats, gloves and other items that cannot be hung on the hooks.

currently, our chalkboard is decorated for valentine's day but i'm sure it will change with the seasons.  camryn loves practicing her lettering on it.  you can see at the bottom she was writing 'valentine.'

i am so happy with this project.  we added storage & creative space, we completed it ourselves and saved quite a chunk of change.  we spent approx $140 so i'd say that is a nice savings!  thanks, pinterest, for inspiring another great project.