Create a #DIY Menu Plan space in your kitchen #Simple

All week I’ve been telling you about my Menu Plan area in the kitchen and so far I showed you how I preserved my recipes and menu plan by Laminating it and also printing cool Menu Plan sheets (oh, don’t forget to enter our giveaway for that). Now it’s time to show how simple it was to create my entire Menu Plan area and it’s on a budget as well.

I had this big white canvas in my kitchen, the side of the Ikea Expedite Bookshelf that is the divider between my dining room and the kitchen; I wanted to soften up the space, but I also needed something that wouldn’t take up too much room, meaning stick out too far, because we don’t have too much room to walk  through and have stuff sticking out and be in the way.

I thought about painting the entire side with chalkboard paint so we have a huge chalkboard, but I didn’t care for black and I do know that you can add color now to chalk paint, but it still didn’t make me say “AWESOME”. I spend a few days looking at the white sides and then saw a piece of old fence board that fell off and I loved the color of the weathered wood look.

That was it.. it was perfect… I asked hubby to go pull a few of the wood blanks from our fence and replace the “old” ones with new ones, I sooo wanted that grayish old weather color, well.. it wasn’t easy to pull the blanks off in one piece so I decided to buy new ones; Lowes sells fence blanks for $1 each and since I only needed 4, that was a cheap project.

This is what I used to create the Menu Plan Station

• 3 sheet metal sheets (they are like $4 each at Lowes, depending on the size you get mine are I think 12×18 each) ~ I will turn them into magnet/chalkboards
• 4 Fence replacement panels ~ $1 each at Lowes
• Chalkboard paint (already had in the cabinet)
• Wood stain, color of choice ( I already had mine from prior projects)

That’s it… simple as that. Now it was time to stain the wood; I did sand it down a bit, but didn’t really make a difference; I used an old sock to rub the wood stain on; doesn’t’ have to be perfect, you want it to look like old wood when it’s done. Took about 5 minutes, let dry.

While the boards dried I took the sheet metal and the chalk paint, painted one side and let dry; did that about 4-5 coats to get a nice chalk paint coating for my chalkboard.

Once all was dry, I put it up in the kitchen on the side of the Ikea Expedite bookshelf. The wood blanks went up with nails; made it look like a piece of fence is in my kitchen.

I love how it softened the space and gave it a complete look that tied the dining room that is wood colors into the modern kitchen. LOVE it… and for just $4 a super cool makeover, even if you don’t use it for a Menu Plan Wall, this would be cool in any home for pictures or to hold your keys, notes etc….

Once I had my Sheet metals all painted, I decided I wanted some color, so one metal board got some scrapbook paper mod podge … attached all with nails and voila… super simple and we now have magnet and chalkboards all in one…. Ready for our recipes, Menu Plan and even the grocery list of things we need to buy we can write on the Chalkboard… LOVE it… first perfect in small spaces and makes my room look complete… What do you think????

For more #DIY projects, be sure to check out my DIY corner… we love to decorate the house DIY style and don’t forget to follow my Pinterest for even more ideas.