Chalkboard Fairy

Lucy and I are at my parents' again this week but Craig is busy back at the ranch. It's always fun to go home at the end of the week and see what he has accomplished on the house. Last time, I left a project mid-stream - my chalkboard wall. Well, "mid" might be a bit of a stretch. I had planned it out, bought the supplies and did a bit of measuring but that's about it.

But let's go back a step. I had originally wanted a full chalkboard wall in the future kitchen/dining room area but Craig wasn't too keen on that much chalkboard. So when I saw this half wall over at The Blessed Nest, I swooned. I just knew I could convince Craig that we needed that in our hall.

Here is our hall before. Except this pic is really before. Before we redid the floors, added thresholds, moved in (that's Lucy's room sans furniture you are seeing) and changed the light fixture. But you get the idea. It's boring, like most halls. But boring is not what I was hoping for and I knew it would be pretty easy to get Craig on board. This project was pretty easy and I could do most of the work myself :-)

We were originally going to wait since it obviously is more of a want than a need on our to-do. But we still had the saw, air compressor and nail gun that we had borrowed from our friends to install our shoe moldings. We could have done it without those things, but it was going to be much easier with them, so why not get it done now?

But then before I had done anything more than measure, Lucy and I took off for my parents' and when we returned, this is what we found:

The chalkboard fairy has come and filled in my measurements with two lovely coats of chalkboard paint! It wasn't quite done but it was well on its way. And apparently the chalkboard fairy has many talents because my molding was also cut and stained. So the next day we were easily able to nail the molding into place. Since only one edge of the wall had door trim, we opted for a thinner trim on both edges to give it a picture frame look.

Here is the final result. I love it! Right now Lucy is more interested in eating chalk than drawing with it but when she is old enough to be trusted with the chalk, I want to hang two tiny metal buckets on the wall to hold the chalk and an eraser. Until then, the chalk will stay up high and I will use the board for my memory verse.