This is a cheats guide to making your own magnetic blackboard for your kitchen. Perfect for all sizes of kitchen! The cost will come in at under a tenner as well! Something to make everyone happy about! Low budget and wont take more than an evening or two to complete.
You will need:
-
-
- fine sanding paper
- 4″ Mini Roller Set
250ml Blackboard Paint - Black
-
You are going to paint directly to your fridge freezer. This is the scary bit. Ours was secondhand and really chipped and horrible. Like most people we covered it with magnets and paperwork. Mainly it was an effort to hide the very tired look of it. If you have just spent a few hundred on a new fridge freezer, you may not wish to use blackboard paint on it at all! The DIY blackboard paint project works as an upcycling project. It helped us to avoid taking the fridge freezer to landfill.
By not doing this is would have meant spending a lot more money on a new item for our kitchen! If you have already subscribed you will know about our No Spend Year and how we are looking to stop any new purchases. Perfect for a Zero Waste No Spend Kitchen Win!
How to make a DIY magnetic chalkboard
- With the fine sandpaper, lightly rub the area you want to paint. The fridge may be slightly dirty or smeared on the outside. Once it is rubbed down you will need to wipe it clean.
This is why we hide our tired old fridge. - Our fridge had lots of really bad and deep scratches. It needed a slightly more firm sand, but the paint will cover it completely.
Sanding it down will help to minimise the scratches but don’t worry too much - Run masking tap along any areas you do not wish to paint. We kept the handle clear of blackboard paint so as to make it look more professional, however I did not use masking tape and really regret that. It came up looking a bit wobbly so I had to get my steady handed husband to touch it up.
Cover the area as it will drip! - We used a paint brush for this, but you can use a mini roller. Blackboard paint is really runny so make sure you clear excess from the brush before applying it. Make sure to cover right to the edges.
- Work from the middle outwards and ensure that any excess paint does not run. This will mean that you don’t have any streaks or smears.
When it is still wet it will look terrible. Like seriously terrible. You will want to touch it up straightaway with more paint. Beware! If you do this it will take off the partly dried paint layer you initially put on.
The paint is robust enough that no greasy fingerprints show. It can also be washed down and wiped clean. Then you need to get some of these. Magnetic Letters Numbers 
How is it a magnetic blackboard?
We are utilising the magnetic properties of the fridge freezer. You can buy paint with metal in to make it magnetic, but we are cheating. The Blackboard paint will not be so thick as to stop the magnetism from the fridge.
What other upcycled furniture ideas do we have?
We love to make do and mend, but we also love to add our own twist. This means we get to use quality Dark Wood Dining Chairs and we can then make funky, fun furniture for our home. We even used old Railway sleepers to make a mantelpiece for our fireplace. We try not to throw anything away so even reuse old bed linen and have created a fab range of Peg Loom Rag Rugs for our home.
Will it be a magnetic blackboard?
Yes the magnetism from the fridge freezer is strong enough to work through the paint layer.
That is why we have upcycled our old, tired fridge freezer. It allows us to maximise the space available. You can paint directly on to any magnetic item of exisiting equipment in your kitchen. We would probably not chose to do this if we had a lovely new fridge freezer, but ours was really battered and covered in scratches.
With ours it has come in at under £5. This is because we used our horrible, battered old fridge freezer. Please do not try this on a lovely new fridge freezer if you do not own it yourself! Basically we were able to make this our very own upcycled kitchen project, otherwise we may have bought a new one sooner.
It took me around an hour to sand it down and paint it. Please be aware though that the strong smell will last for a lot longer. The blackboard paint is really strong in smell and therefore we left the house to sort the garden out whilst it dried. That took around 6 hours, so our garden is looking grand right now. Make sure no little fingers can come into contact with the blackboard paint as white spirits are required to get it off skin.
