Chasing Cheerios

Monday, July 21, 2008

DIY Gigantic Outdoor Chalkboard

One of my goals for O's birthday party was to make a huge outdoor chalkboard. I barely made it...I was still painting it at around 12:00, and the party started at 3pm. It was fairly easy to make.
1st- buy 1 piece of treated plywood and cut it to the desired size
2nd- paint the plywood with primer. You may want to sand it first. I painted ours with 2 coats of primer, and it still had rough spots that I filled in outdoor wood filler. Then I had to wait for the wood filler to dry, sand it, then paint another coat of primer. After 3 coats of primer, I painted the board with chalk paint
3rd- I taped off a border with masking tape, and then painted it with 2 coats of chalkboard paint.
4th- After the chalkboard paint dried, I pulled off the masking tape and painted the border red. I painted 2 or 3 coats on the border.
The kids loved drawing on the chalkboard at O's party, and its also lots of fun erasing the chalk with water using paint brushes.

9 comments:

  1. great games and chalkboard! the best thing is she can use them after!!! i love chalkboard paint!!!!

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  2. wHAT A NEAT IDEA!!!!!

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  3. Just wanted to let you know I linked to this on my weekly roundup here. And the sidewalk chalk recipe. Thanks!

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  4. Im just curious as to do you leave this outside yearlong? and if so have you noticed the plywood begin to warp or show water damage at all?? I really want to make one but I live in Utah and we get all sorts of weather here so that concerns me. Thanks tho I really love the idea!

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  5. I LOVE THIS! I AM GOING TO MAKE ONE!!

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  6. LOVE this every time I read about it!!!!! Adding it to hubby's "To Do" list. LOL

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  7. I am adding this to my to do list for our backyard this year. Thanks for the directions!

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  8. I love the HUGE chalkboard! I found a great recipe online to make your own chalkboard paint! So, We painted the horizontal strips on our fence with it! The children are loving the narrow chalkboards everywhere, but We might have to add this to our list of outdoor projects! I'm going to link it up to our outdoor classroom ideas page. Thanks for sharing!

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  9. I forgot to sign out of the organization's email account again! So, the comment above really came from me :).

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