The little table and chairs that I picked up at Ikea for $20 was in a sad state of disrepair after a couple of years. The top of the table was made of a material that was little more than cardboard, so it didn't hold up to the rough play of my three kids. However, rather than throwing out the table, we decided to take some scrap plywood from our garage and create a new table-top--this time with a chalkboard finish. Our chalkboard paint was leftover my last chalkboard project and we already had the wood in our garage, so the project was "free" for us--though I'm sure it wouldn't cost much if you were to buy the materials.
To make this table, we first cut a piece of plywood slightly larger than the original table frame. That way the table that could barely fit two chairs can now easily fit four or even six small chairs around the sides.
We cut off the corners so we didn't have any sharp edges to worry about with the kids.
Next, I sanded down the plywood and painted three layers of chalkboard paint onto the plywood, sanding between each layer and following the directions on the back of the paint can.
When the paint was dry, we screwed in the table from below. My husband measured and drilled holes and then screwed in the screws so that they held the plywood on securely without going through the top.
We then cured our chalkboard and then let the kids begin to play with it!
We soon realized that chalk dust can make a big mess, so if we were do to this again, we would definitely add trim around the edge to keep chalk dust from getting all over the ground. But as for now, we have kept it and just moved the chalk table to our kitchen where we can easily wipe up the chalk dust after kids are done playing. We also will throw a table cloth on this and use this as a kids' table for eating.
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