Joe and I have been working and working some more on our house. We are completely unpacked, most pressing fix-it problems are done, and all the awful meatball shrubs outside are gone. We like having projects to work on, it was one of the reasons we decided to go ahead and buy a house. I’m not as prone to boredom as I once was.
Thought I would share one project that we did together. We had an old fridge that we decided to keep. I wanted to paint it with chalkboard paint, something I’ve seen done many times online. Here’s the after picture. A before picture would be an old white fridge, and I’m pretty sure you’ve seen one before.
(And Christmas is coming! I didn’t realize just how close it was until I put this up.)
Many projects like this are a bit of a mystery as to how hard they are going to be. We painted our dining room table (twice) and it was pain and didn’t turn out as good as we hoped. But painting a fridge was easy. Easier than painting a room or a table.
First we sanded the fridge down with sandpaper we had on hand. Just enough to start to see the metal coming through. Now the hard part: while cleaning the fridge I discovered a bunch of sticky carmel/jam mess under a shelf in the freezer, and under the fridge. It was awful cleaning that up. But it was (I hope) abnormal to come across such a mess.
After cleaning, my Joe took the fridge apart (I wouldn’t have, but I think guys just like to take things apart sometime). We had leftover chalkboard paint from the previous owners we used on the doors. (Actually we have gallons and gallons of leftover paint. If you ever need spare paint I might have some.) It covered pretty well, and we did two coats on everything. We painted the body of the fridge with black high gloss paint, which was of course left over from the previous owner. It only takes less than a quart of paint for the whole fridge.
The handles were originally painted with normal paint. Not a good idea–I went and bought silver spray paint that was labeled to stick to plastic and it worked much better.
The total cost of the project was $5 for spray paint. And I like having two fridges. Big grocery trips don’t end with a impromptu game of tetris.
By Judy Herr: I bought a past edition off amazon for the cost of shipping. The book organizes activities based on themes. It has art projects, finger plays, sensory activities, music, and more. It is probably what I use the most to plan our school.
: My mom had this book growing up. I remembered it. I’m 18 lessons in teaching PB to read and we are enjoying it. It is helping PB get used to a little more structure than we often have, and as a side benefit I think it is also helping Mr. C in his language as he listens to us. A lesson takes around 15 minutes, it is phonetically based. PB was ready for it at four. And he is learning to read quite rapidly, just doing one lesson a day.
Liz Braithwaite 