Pantry Chalkboard Project…. The Mistakes and the Recommendations

For many years I’ve dreamed of having the inside of my pantry cabinet lined with a chalkboard to use for my grocery shopping list. I think about it all of the time. For some reason the other day I got a wild hair to do it. I brought home a can of Chalk Spray paint and figured this will be easy, (right?)

I’m not a patient person. I dove in head first by taking off the door and went to town spraying it. BIG MISTAKE! I knew better! Why? There was a heavy coat of varathane on the door. I should have taken the time to sand the door first. I headed back to the office and picked up a can of paint stripper and a putty knife. Now I had an even bigger job of removing the varathane AND the chalk paint. An hour later, both the chalk paint and the varathane was removed.

Attempt two… Once I stripped everything off the door, I started again. Clean slate. I sprayed one nice coat of Chalk paint on and allowed it to dry before applying a second coat. (Patience is a virtue.) This time around it looked right. The first attempt left the chalk paint shiny and unusable. This time it dried with that chalk matte look. Much better! Into the house I went with my newly painted cabinet door. I reinstalled the door, and to my delight, everything looked great! Then came my next revelation. I had painted the left hand cabinet door. I’m left handed. I practically have to climb in the cabinet to write on my chalkboard door. Lesson learned! This would make a great blog post, I thought, so others don’t make the same mistake! You guessed it; now maybe I need to paint the right hand side door? The left hand side could be my weekly menu and the right hand side (where I can write more easily) could be the shopping list.