I’ve been busy pulling together the finishing touches on the #NeverEndingReno in the kitchen (big reveal coming soon!!), and I ended up doing throwing a few last minute unplanned projects into the room.
Shocking, I know.
When I redo a room, I try to solve the nagging issues in the space – whether it’s making it work more efficiently, creating better flow, adding additional storage or whatever. One of the issues I was trying to solve in the kitchen involved meal planning.
When I need to get groceries, I decide what I want to make that week and then write my grocery list based on that. The meals are jotted in the margins of my grocery list. All well and good, except I rarely remember to actually save the list, so a few days later I find myself standing in front the fridge trying to figure out why on earth I bought poblano peppers, heavy cream and shredded Swiss cheese.
I thought I would start writing down meals for the week in a visible permanent spot in the kitchen, but I couldn’t figure out where to put it – I have almost no wall space in this room. As usual, the perfect solution was the most obvious one.
When I started the renovation back in 2012, I painted the doors and trim white and I used chalkboard paint on the top panel of the kitchen door. I use it randomly to jot down ingredients as I use them up, but I wouldn’t say it’s getting heavy use.
After contemplating the menu board problem for a few days, the obvious struck me – why not turn the existing chalkboard into a menu board?
Duh…
I gave the board a fresh coat of chalkboard paint and grabbed some stencils and a chalk marker – both came from Michael’s.
I wanted the lettering to be somewhat permanent and according to the directions, the chalk marker is only erasable on non-porous surfaces like glass and white boards.
I wasn’t 100% sure the marker was going to look right, but it ended up working out great.
My stencils were pretty big so I just put the first letter of each day of the week rather than the full name.
I have an upside down cup drawer pull mounted on the door to hold the chalk and a handy bin for incoming mail.
I may mess around it a bit more – I’m thinking about adding lines between the days – but overall I’m pretty happy with it. Will it solve my mystery dinner ingredient problem?
I’ll keep you posted on that. 🙂
I’m linking this project up at some terrific blog parties – you can find my complete list of places I party HERE.
