Oh, for shame, Kate! I swore to myself that I would do some posting while I was home in Oregon (for a very, very lovely wedding, in which I was participating and at which I gave a toast–eep–and ate wonderful food and danced a lot and my feet hurt), but I was too too busy and didn’t. Very briefly, here is the final result of the magnetic blackboard saga. I painted 5 or 6 coats of the magnetic primer, one coat of white primer and one coat (plus touch-ups) of homemade blackboard paint, from Martha Stewart Living per Germi‘s tip. The chalkboard works, but not that well–the wall is just too textured to get a smooth line from the chalk. I love the idea, though, and will definitely use the recipe for future projects–it is super easy and I bet it works great if you have a smooth surface and, um, use matte paint instead of eggshell heavily doctored with regular acrylics. Ahem.

Anyway!

This before picture doesn’t show the blank wall very well–the blank wall where the board went, anyway. But it does show the messy office and how badly I needed to hang art.

Now (The wall color is the same and is more accurate in the before photo!):

Closer look at the board–I had no idea I was on a citrus and orange-colored-things kick until I put up a pile of things I’d been saving in one place. The power of the inspiration board!

In addition to not writing very well on the bumpy surface, the chalk is not well served by my horrible handwriting–I need penmanship classes. There is a girl in my office with the most astonishing handwriting, and I always think back to my friend Margaret’s gorgeous perfect cursive with longing… I am too impatient!

Funny synergy thing: I just caught up on my bloglines from the last 5 days and saw that Mrs. Limestone just did a magnetic blackboard, too. And then I saw blackboard walls all over at The Kitchn today. Odd.