How To... Chalk Paint Style Kitchen Cupboards

This is my dream kitchen!

I absolutely love the idea of painting your kitchen cabinets with blackboard paint. I love the way that the left over smudgey chalk can give it so much texture and feel really warm and homey, despite being black. I also love the practicality of chalkboard. I always forget something when I go food shopping because I can never be bothered to write down a list.

This is the kitchen in my studio (before I moved many, many belongings in!) The most annoying thing about renting is that you can't change anything. It's very difficult to put a bit of your own personality into your living space. If it was my choice I would just rip them out, along with the tiles. We are allowed to give them a fresh coat of paint, but would have to keep them white. They're not too bad, but I think that landlord built them himself, so they are just very boring looking, white painted plywood.

 And this is my kitchen now!

I'm much happier with how it's looking. Seeing as I couldn't paint the cupboards with blackboard paint, I figured that there's nothing actually stopping me from putting blackboards up! There's still a long way to go, but already I think this area looks a bit more personal and like MY kitchen. My next step is to try and persuade my landlord to let me paint the kitchen blue. Living in a studio I think it's really important to divide the space into seperate areas and different colours of paint is a great way to do that.

If you want to do this yourself it's really easy. All you need is 1) blackboards with a wooden frame (however many you fancy) 2) jute twine or butcher's twine. 3) a small drill (I used a dremmel), 4) ruler, 5) pencil.

Step 1) Place your blackboard face down. It's best to use an old surface that you don't mind drilling into by accident. I used an old craft cutting mat. I purchased the blackboards from ebay for £1.99 each including the postage.

2) With your pencil and ruler mark the centre point along the top and bottom. This is where you will attach the twine.

3) Take your small drill or dremmel and drill a hole at the points you marked. I found it easiest to drill from the back. Then once the bit has poked through the front, turn the blackboard over and drill through the other side. I found this gave a neater hole.

4) Once you have your holes thread the end of the twine through one and tie very tightly.

5) Then take the blackboard and twine over to your cupboard. Place the blackboard in the desired position and throw the loose end of the twine over the top of the cupboard.

6) Run the loose end of the twine down the back of the cupboard door and back up the front until it reaches the bottom hole of the blackboard. Allowing enough to tie a knot cut the end of the twine to the length needed.

7) Pull the twine as tight as you can and thread through the bottom hole. Tie in place. It is so important to pull the twine as tight as possible as this is what keeps the blackboard in place. If it's too loose it will fall straight down to the bottom of the cupboard door.

This last step is definitely the trickiest and may take a bit of trial and error. Make sure you have enough twine for muck ups! I personally found the most difficult part to be threading the twine through the bottom hole in step 6. It kept fraying at the end. Overall though, this is an incredibly easy thing to do. It probably took me an hour one evening to finish it all! Also, the great thing about this is that the boards will only get better as time goes on and the more chalk smudges there are.

 

It's also fun to think of some ideas of where to keep your chalk. I used this old teacup. It's such a pretty cup, but has a hairline crack in it so can no longer be used for tea. It's perfect to store the chalk and it is lovely that it can be used for something again. I love repurposing items.

 

I hope you found this tutorial useful. I would love to see some pictures if any of you try it out yourselves.