I’ve got one in my kitchen very similar to the 3rd photo with the little girl, oven to her left. I use it all of the time. We framed it in with lengths of trim. I drew a calendar grid with white paint and fill it in with chalk numbers once a month. I doodle seasonal sketches above it. When I run out something in the kitchen I reach over and jot it down. Saves me time remembering later. I sometimes make a cute little menu or a coffee cup with a Starbucks motif. Having it from floor to ceiling lets my kids use the bottom for scribbles. My favorite part is when I wake up to find that my husband has left a little love note on there ;) Also, they do sell chalk markers at art stores that look great on the board though takes using a magic eraser to remove (for mine at least). Can’t wait to see yours!

At our old house we painted the under part of our island in the kitchen with chalkboard paint. When the girls were little during the day we would pull out the stools and they would draw. Afterwards we would clean up and put the stools back. Guests never even notice it was there. We did have to wipe up chalk dust, I used a damp cloth.

Can’t wait to see what you come up with!!!!

Shayna & Sarah – I’m loving your kid-friendly chalkboard ideas! I should have posted about this BEFORE I did ours. Calendars, islands and chalk markers?! Who knew!

[…] be disgusting.  You heard about my decision to welcome a chalkboard something into our house here.  Well, after a little once-overing, I discovered we don’t really have a lot of wall space, […]

I like the door, too, that’s sharp! Silly question–where do you keep the chalk?!

I wonder if you could incorporate a magnetic strip into your design (from ikea, or container store), and add something like this as a combo chalkholder/eraser:

http://www.containerstore.com/shop/office/messageBoards/accessories

Carole – For now, I’ve just been keeping the chalk in our junk drawer in the kitchen. That way, the kids don’t really free reign to draw all over the place anytime they want. They ask me for the chalk when they want to use it and then we put it away when they’re done. I absolutely LOVE the idea of getting some kind of chalkholder accessory…maybe when my 2-year-old is a little less spunky!

I have a floor to ceiling chalkboard wall in my boys’ room on a small wall near the door. I love it, and I even added an eraser/chalk tray that I took off an old chalkboard we had. I’m thinking of adding a skinny chalkboard wall in the kitchen between my fridge and counter, it’s maybe 1 1/2 ft wide.