For the Love of Chalkboard Paint

Last week I had a mental breakdown.  I was on a mission.  A refinishing mission of epic proportions. The kids went wild.  I would share photo evidence, but lets just say that I was so crazy busy that my camera was WAY in the back of my mind.  I usually try to do a redo slowly over the course of a week, or more so that life still happens.  Thus why my productivity rate is usually low.  So the week started off with something simple that then morphed into a full-on overwhelming project.  Like doing eight of these suckers.

When we built our awesometastic kitchen a year ago we put in some cabinet framing on the side of our wall oven for the express purpose of having a chalkboard area.  We bought our chalkboard paint, and no I didn't make my own.  We bought Rustoleum Chalkboard paint.  They only offer it in 12 different shades.  So our choices were limited to say the least.  I chose the shade Deep Teal.  We were also going to be super cool, and use magnetic paint under so we would have a magnetic surface under the chalkboard paint.  FYI if you are going to do this make sure that when you buy it, you use it immediately.  We bought it WAY to early, and the metal shavings had become super settled on the bottom.   There was no way to shake or stir those bad boys back in, short of heading back to HomeDepot to use their paint shaker thing.  We tried in vain to make do at home.  This was the result.

Most people thought this was the chalkboard, but this was the failed magnetic paint.  We might try this again at a later date, but as of now it was scraped.  Then we left it to sit for months...almost a year really.  Because thats how awesome I am.  Fast forward to last week.  Señor Hotness and I were watching TV in the kitchen after the horde was blissfully in bed.  I was wasting time on Pinterest, as usual, and the hubs was doing actual work.  So to be productive I decided to pull out the chalkboard paint that has been taking up shelf space for a year.  I can do that while we watch tv.  See I do have great ideas for being productive.  So I did this.

I'm not sure why this looks so stinking streaky in the picture.  It looks fabulous in real life.  Thats my completely honest observation.  After getting it on the wall I made a discovery.  The color was super close to some new kitchen rugs I had just bought...that I loved.

So I had the bright idea to finally paint my EIGHT barstools.  Now I buy 99% of our furniture from craigslist, but these I had purchased brand new at a raw wood furniture place in Tyler a year ago, and was promptly stumped with how I should finish them out.  So they sat, and sat and sat...for a year.  Do you know what can happen to raw wood things in a house like mine over the course of a year?  The result wasn't pretty.  So it was a good thing I decided to re-sand the tops to better accept the stain.

This was one of the less gross chairs.  We had six saddle style stools, and two with back and swivel seats.  So because I've been on a bit of a kick here lately I did this to them.

Which prompted Señor Hotness to politely ask me not to chevron anything else.  I thought that was sad indeed, but have respected his wishes...at least for the time being.  Then I hit them with my stain combo choice here lately.  I little bit of this.

And a little bit of that.

I let the Dark Walnut stain really soak in there.  You should never allow excess stain to sit on top for longer than 7-10 minutes.  Any longer and the stain becomes gummy and difficult to wipe off, and looks supremely awful. The end result was this.

See those swivel chairs in the back?  Those were the really crappy part of this project.  That and I kept changing my mind about how I was going to do them.  So at first I stained the bottoms only, and then decided  that the spindles needed a shot of stain as well.  Only to then decide that the top above the spindles needed to be stained too.  Be decisive.  It saves you time, and sanity in the long run.

Then it was time to give the bottoms a paint job.  I had decided on the chalkboard paint because I just really needed a clean dry surface, and then I could paint.  No need to prime.  This is where things got overwhelming.  Each chair needed two coats for proper coverage, and it took me SIX stinking hours of continuous painting to get every nook and cranny these chairs had to offer.

That seemed too blue so I got out my trusty glaze, and went to town on them.  A couple of things happened in the glazing process.  Number one was I ended up putting it on WAY darker than I had originally intended.  That and I missed some spots.

Dont glaze in a dark room folks!  Things happen!  Bad things, like you end up having a heavier hand with the glaze, and then miss super noticeable spots.  Also when you tend to be heavy handed with the glaze it can greatly alter the color of an object so...

This

became this

Now the top color didn't look right with base, and apparently this rug looked like teal and pink to some of my Facebook peeps.  Not so folks.  The rug is cream and teal.  So I was going to tweak the chevron color to cream to better fit in with the rug inspiration that I had used.  However, at this point I had started a buttload of other projects, and we desperately needed our stools back.  Our kitchen island is primarily where we eat our meals.  So I just put them all around the island to use momentarily, and something magical happened.  They didn't look awful.  Which of course is high praise indeed.

Now I think they really tie in nicely with my other great kitchen love!  My vintage blue jars.  I'm going to finish painting that wall tonight...I promise.  I have picked these up several places.  They are mostly from the 1930s and I love them. 

So the idea is to eventually give those chevrons a cream redo, but until then we are happily using them once more.

Linked up at: Kammy's Korner, internationalbloggersassociation.com