DIY – Dry-Erase Paint AND Giveaway!

We have had this large whiteboard up on the door in our kitchen (leads into the laundry room) for many years now. We use it daily. We keep shopping lists on it, draw fun pictures, write notes to each other, etc. When we have company we write birthday messages (like above) or list all the things we have to drink – whatever fits the mood. As you can see, this board had gotten very cloudy at this point. The bigger problem was that it was heavy and if that door got slammed (yes, we have door slammers in our house) then the dumb board would fall off the hook partly or totally. Ugh. When I was asked to give IdeaPaint a try I knew that this door is exactly where I would use the sample!

Hubby removed the old board and anchors and first had to patch up those giant holes and sand them down really well. The whole surface needed to be cleaned well and sanded – this is a very important step!

Next he taped off the area that he was going to paint. Then we used Kilz 2 primer to seal the surface and get it prepared. I believe he had to sand in between coats of this as well. It is really important to follow the instructions in the package. This is not one of those projects you can avoid the instructions on and that was per Hubby who normally ignores the rules.

You can tell I was not at home when Hubby did this project. Do you know how? There is no tarp or plastic covering my kitchen table! ACK! Anyway…. you have to mix the two parts of the paint that are in the kit together well to get started. It is a stinky product so do this when you can open up the windows. When the paint is ready pour it in the tray (not included) and use the included roller to apply to your surface. You only need one coat of the actual dry-erase paint, but apply it liberally.

You can see that it does have a bit of a bumpy texture to it after you apply it. This worried me a lot. I asked the PR rep about it and she said that it was normal. The paint has to cure for 7 days to use it and they gave you a nifty little blue sign to hang up even – cute idea. In the meantime I went to BlogHer and the Lowe’s booth had this paint up on a wall that we could try out. There sample area was also bumpy so that made me feel better. I wrote on erased on theirs and it worked great – I was surprised! Back at home Hubby added a couple of dollars worth of trim he picked up at Lowe’s around the edge of our painted area to finish it off a bit.

Ta-Da! It works. You do have to use NON low-odor markers though – a bit harder to find. You can see above I wrote on the door and then wiped it off without any problems. We no longer will have that heavy whiteboard falling on us all the time now!