The Joys of Chalkboard Paint

For a while now, I've been obsessed with refinishing furniture—and anything else I can think of—with chalkboard paint.  Why? Because I like the deep, chalky black texture it lends to anything you put it on. It's a little moody, a little Edwardian, a little modern.

For example, back when I was redoing my house in Birmingham, my first "chalkboard" project was refinishing all my door hardware. The house was built in the thirties, but all the backplates were different. Some were brass, some had tons of gunky paint, and so on. I had already painted all the doors in the house hi-gloss black, and I wanted to unify the hardware on each of them. So I took all the backplates off, stripped them, primed them, and coated them twice with chalkboard paint. And much to my surprise, they looked amazing! 

Eventually, I saved up enough to put in heavy cast-iron hardware, but the chalkboard finish did the trick for a whole year. Since then, I've painted photo frames, bookshelves, walls, and more with it. Then I realized I needed to cool it, or everything in my house would be chalkboard black!

But when I moved to Charleston, the itch returned. I've refinished an old dining cabinet and a chair in recent months.

This traditional dining cabinet (below) was originally plain wood, but I like it so much more in bold black. Don't get me wrong. I love wood, but I have so much of it in my house that having other textures in the rooms helps to keep things interesting.

I bought this garden chair from a great company called America Retold at gift show last year because I loved the lacy shape. It was originally a soft green, but I knew I wanted to use it at my vanity, and I knew I wanted it to be black—chalkboard black. To me, grounding such a feminine space with black makes it a little less fussy. 

And believe it or not, you can make any color of paint have a chalkboard finish—red, lapiz lazuli blue, gray, yellow, you name it. All you have to do is have your paint store mix in two tablespoons of plain unsanded grout for every cup of paint you'd like to use. It really works.

This is one of my favorite decorating tricks. What are some of yours?