Project

I have been planning on doing this project for a few months now. I call it, the magnet-chalkboard-chicken-wire-in-a-frame. I have had everything I needed it just took some time to actually do it, but this Saturday was the day I was going to put all my time into it!

I have seen these two ideas used separately on my daily blog stalking excursions so I decided to put the two together and make this magnet-chalkboard-chicken-wire-in-a-frame. And boy this was not easy!

I bought this huge frame at a local thrift store a few months ago for only $5. It seemed to be pretty old and was beat up a little.


I bought the paint and chicken wire at The Home Depot soon after. Then I was on a wild goose hunt for a magnet board. I swear I checked everyplace under the sun! I refused to spend a lot of money because that defeated the whole purpose of my project. I thought using sheet metal would be best but at the home improvement stores they only had one size that I would cut down to use and it was $18! Yeah right! James and I spent a few Saturdays looking at junk yards and scrap metal places and we came up with nothing! I did think of a few things I could use if all else failed but they were not what I really wanted.

One day James and I went to Fed-ex Kinkos to print off a picture on card stock for a future project and he noticed these real estate magnets on a magnet board thingy majiggy. So we asked about it but he said they only made the magnets! Bummer! BUT the guy told us to go to this sign place where he used to work. We we headed there right after, but guess what, they were already closed!

A few days or weeks later I don't remember I decided to stop by and ask if they had anything that would work for what I needed. The people that work/own this place were extremely nice and friendly! The guy went into the back to see what he had and he brought out the most beautiful piece of metal I have ever seen. Haha. He cut it to the size I needed and everything. And guess what...it cost $7!!!!!BARGIN!!!!!!


So yesterday was the day when all this came full circle. I woke up early so it wouldn't be too hot outside when I was painting. I first sanded the frame with my electric sander and wiped it off really good. Then I primed it. Meanwhile I got the sheet of metal and primed that as well. Then it was time to paint the fun stuff. (Nothing disastrous has happened yet up to this point).


James sprayed the chalk board paint onto the metal and I worked on the frame.


While we let them dry we went out to run errands and when we came back I decided to distress my frame. I am total amateur when it comes to this kind of thing. I only did one side and it looked horrible! So I took it outside sprayed a little primer on the dark spots. Waited a little bit and sprayed it green again! IT WAS AWFUL! The paint got all clumpy and wouldn't cover up the scratch marks! I was mortified. I thought I ruined the whole thing. James came out to the rescue as he always does and sanded the whole side again as much as he could. I took a breather and went back about sprayed it again. It wasn't perfect but much better than before! I should have taken picture of how awful it was...but I guess it is a good thing I didn't that way you only see how great it did turn out.

Okay so as my novel continues...We hoped the staple gun would just magically staple the metal into the frame. What were we thinking??? So James being all cute drilled little holes into the metal so that he could line the staple gun on the whole and do it that way. I couldn't figure out what he was doing but I just let me try anyways. So as he was drilling and planning it out so carefully in his head, really, he drilled the wrong side of the metal so now I had holes visible on the side by the chicken wire. But again..it worked out in the end.


Seeing that the staples wouldn't go into the whole I suggested hammering them. This was so time consuming and they don't hammer well at all. But it worked so that is all that mattered at this point.

So we got the metal in and now it was time for the chicken wire. We had stapled one whole side and then I noticed they went through to the other side of the frame splitting the wood! We took a towel and hammered it the other way and decided it looked like real distress marks. Then we had to mimik this boo-boo on the other side too so we scratched it out with scissors. Again, it all worked out. So despite all those "HORRIBLE" boo-boos it all worked out. (James kept saying that too-why does he always have to be right!?)


Here is how it turned out. We love it.
(I got a little photoshop happy if you hadn't noticed)