Keeping it "Girl": Vanity rehab.....

Two of my boys in Dublin!

Every summer our little family travels to Texas to my husband's family's farm. We love going to the farm to visit family and also enjoy the laid back atmosphere. One of my other fav's about this trip is going to check out all of the antique stores in town and along the way.

On our stop in Dublin, Texas (a yearly MUST because of the original DP plant that is still there and STILL uses real sugar in their DP's. We stock up!) we visited the Old Fashioned Soda Fountain, purchased our DP's and then I ventured into some antique stores :) I found one that had just opened a few weeks earlier and noticed this:

It is a "shell" of an old mirror that would sit on someone's vanity. I thought it was beautiful. It has a gray metallic type color and is orange where the paint has chipped away. I love orange and immediately knew what to do with it. The price? $5! Love....mainly because there are some outrageously priced flea markets in our town, so this was a steal comparing.

I knew I had wanted to make this into a chalkboard (kinda even swivels like one of the old school big blackboards!). I threw around the idea of just spray painting wood, but I also wanted this to be magnetic, so I knew that wouldn't work. About a month ago when going through our shed I came across an old cork board/white board combo that we didn't use anymore. A light bulb went off and I decided to attempt to spray paint the whiteboard with chalk board spray and use the cork board for a later project(watch for that one in the *hopefully* near future).

The white/cork board with the casings removed

The next step I enlisted my husband to cut the white board to size in order to fit into the vanity frame. After it was the right size I washed it with a damp cloth and let it dry. I chose Krylon's Chalk board spray (no picture, just imagine...) to cover the surface. The result? The spray adhered wonderfully! After a few coats I said uncle.

Before I put the chalk board in the vanity frame I noticed more chipping paint from the frame so I decided to spray a few coats of a semi-gloss Poly-Urethane (a protective enamel) onto the frame and it's stand (I didn't want to lose all the gray from it!). The result? A great added shine to it and a little tougher surface than we had before.