This Ain't Your Teacher's Chalkboard

I grew up in the '80.  It was a time of leggings, neon, layered socks...and chalkboards.  While the fashion of those times has made a comeback (unfortunately), chalkboards have been replaced by dry-erase boards, "smartboards" and iPads.  This may be good for the learning experience but it made my search for chalkboards difficult.  I had seen some wedding decorations online that used chalkboards and thought they would work perfectly for our outdoor "country elegant" wedding.  So, I hopped on the interwebs thinking I'd have no problems scooping up a few chalkboards for $10 each.  This is America!  The internet!  But no such luck.  I could find an array of boards but all ran above $30 for the size I wanted and I was not spending $120 on the four chalkboards I desired! 

Instead, I went to Fragers, my favorite no-longer-in-my-neighborhood hardware store and, for $30, left with cut wood, moulding, wood glue and the aforementioned green paint.  I already had chalkboard paint at home from another project I'll cover later, so that didn't count as an expense.  I would make my own chalkboards for the price of one.  The easy work was the painting of the boards (chalkboard paint on one side, green paint on the other side, edges and moulding) and gluing the moulding for a frame.  The hard part was cutting the moulding.  Not one to do things the easy way, I wanted the chalkboards to have a frame.  My wonderful fiance agreed a frame would make them look nicer. 

Luckily, Rich's parents live 30 minutes away and have a garage full of tools.  So, armed with a fabulous tool (which I don't know the name of), Rich, his dad and I got down to the business of mitering edges.  I have a great relationship with my now-father-in-law but I definitely encourage the careful consideration of embarking on construction projects with the inlaws.  It worked out well for us, but sometimes such projects do not bring out the best in people and you want to avoid a situation which could leave you yelling at your fiance's parents while waving a circular saw above your head.  Tantrums avoided, we measured and cut 8 short sides and 8 long sides for the 4 frames.  The key with this is making sure the mitering is facing the right direction.  You want to be certain all of your angles face inward or the pieces won't fit together as intended.  Here is a good tutorial on mitering edges yourself. 

Wood cut, I hand-sanded both sides of each of the 16 frame pieces and painted them.  The final touch was using wood glue and a vice to attach each side of the frame to my board.  Because my woodworking skills aren't exactly professional grade, I used some wood filler to fix any gaps between the frame sides.  I then touched that up with more green paint and - Voila! - chalkboards!  I made four, shown below.  In the end, they ended up reading "Gifts and Cards" (for the gift table), "Please take one" (for our favors of maple syrup bottles), "Our love is as strong as these mints" (for the Altoids we gave out - this was also to fit with our first dance "That's how strong my love is" by Otis Redding), and "Please sign our guest book" (for, obvs, our guest book).  They turned out well and we saved a ton of money.