I don’t think I’ve shown off our chalkboard fireplace. It’s turned out to be quite convenient for keeping spiders out of our home!

When we moved in, there wasn’t a grate or anything in front of the fireplace. It was just an exposed big, black hole covered with dust and dirt and spiders. I thought about keeping some of Jack’s toys in there (in a basket or something) but cleaning it out was going to much more work than I wanted, so I decided to cover the opening with a chalkboard.

I picked up some Martha Stewart chalkboard paint at Michaels (it comes in a variety of colors, and half of me still wishes I would have chosen dark grey, but the blue is rather bright and cheerful). We went to Lowes and had a piece of wood cut to fit the size of the opening, and I painted it.

Getting the chalkboard to stay was a little trickier. If we owned our home, I’d say to myself, “we’ll have lots of little around the home for the foreseeable future, so we’ll just make this permanent” and I’d drill holes to attach it to the wall. But when you’re renting, permanent is a bad, bad word. I tried affixing it with command strips, but those didn’t hold. So I finally wedged it in our crooked fireplace tightly and prayed it would stay. (It has. Whew!)

first photo by gail pomare