Chalkboard Backsplash Part 1

My kitchen had no backsplash. I found this very odd. How does a ten year old house make it through life without acquiring some kind of backsplash?

Maybe the previous owners had the same issue I did, which is that I didn’t want to bother with tiling it when I knew I would replace the counter… someday… No way I was going to tile the backsplash only to possibly have a good portion of it destroyed if and when the counter had to go.

I needed something temporary, that I could do, that would bring a little extra something to my kitchen, and possibly more durability. It was a tall order. I googled many variations of “diy backsplash” before I struck gold. Chalkboard paint. Colored chalkboard paint.

I set out to get rustoleum chalkboard paint in garnet. I’m typing that out with the hopes that google bots will eventually find it, because I couldn’t find pictures of it. Aren’t garnets lovely? The picture on the box was a nice deep red.  Little darker than this.

Apparently that picture actually meant this color

It was awful. I’m only exaggerating a little.

Once I got my paint, fresco red is what we went with, I did it the lazy man way and taped everything up. My mom paints to perfection without tape, honestly. I threw on tape and plastic tarp like it was going out of style though. Even if I was feeling brave, I don’t even know what brand of paint was used on the rest of the house, never mind have a bucket on hand for touch-ups, should I accidentally paint some of it fresco red…

Here’s after one coat. This is the time where you would freak out if you don’t realize that dark colors will look like garbage after the first coat. It’s normal. This paint also has a different texture than regular paint, so that adds to it.

And after the second coat

I’m doing one more coat today, and I think we should be good. I can’t draw on it for some ridiculous amount of time though. Three days, I think. So that’s when you get to see it with its third coat, without the blue tape, the stove back in place, and what the heck, we’ll draw on the walls a little.