Fancy-pants Fridge - Refrigerator Makeover

Hey, y'all!  Welcome back to my little patch of Texas. 

     Today I thought I’d finally get around to sharing this fridge makeover I’ve been working on.  Our fridge crapped out on us, and normally that would be cause for much wailing, breast beating, and sackcloth wearing.  Refrigerators are expensive, and normally we would have to really work to come up with that kind of cash.  Fortunately, tax returns were on the way by the time the thing became truly problematic, so we were able to put it on the credit card with the peace of mind knowing that in just a few months we’d pay it back off again. 

     I took the opportunity to get exactly what I wanted:  A French door, bottom-freezer refrigerator with none of that crap poking off the door.  Door ice makers and water dispensers are kind of cool, until they quit working or cause your freezer to malfunction or leak water all over the floor and flood your kitchen, and many more issues that friends and family have had with their fancy fridges.  We don’t even have a water line hooked up to ours, so the in-freezer ice maker is just an extra drawer, and all the do-dads hanging off the door would just be a waste.  Besides, I wanted all that door-front real estate for my own purposes. 

So here it is.  Yes, it has handles, but I asked the delivery guy to just leave them off.  He looked at me funny when I said I was painting it.  Remember with the baking station, I said my wisteria vine was going to be my kitchen inspiration?>  I painted this big beastie a beautiful shade of spring green that Behr calls sap green. A lot of these pictures make it look more of a gray or blue color, but it’s really a lovely soft spring green.  There’s a big bay window over my kitchen sink that you can actually see pretty well in the reflection here, and it gives lots of natural light to the room.  I love it and would not change it for anything, but it does seem to wash out my pictures. 

     The plan originally was to have an inventory for the freezers on one door, a grocery list on the other door, a pantry inventory on one side, and a calendar on the other side.  It didn’t all quite come out according to plan, but I am still very happy with it. 

Remember that rope that I used to make the drawer pulls for my desk?  We pulled the plies apart and wrapped the handles with it rather than paint them.  Pa wrapped it tight, tied it close, and secured the rope to itself with wood glue.  After it dried and cured, we trimmed off the tied bit.  It’s been a few months, and the rope hasn’t even tried to budge. 

     I figured the rope would hide grimy fingerprints, would give a better grip to damp hands, looked nicer than plain white, and tied the two pieces together more thoroughly.  It also, in my opinion, better evinces the idea of a wisteria vine, but that just could be my brain waxing poetic in my happiness with how this all turned out. 

     With a bit of creative ingenuity (I thought it was pretty smart anyway), I finagled a way to transfer a pretty font and wingdings onto the fridge for my calendar and grocery list. 

First, using word with view rulers enabled, select your font and size so that it’s exactly how you want it.  Once you’ve printed it out, trace heavily over the reverse side with a pencil. 

After you’ve done that, use magnet or tape to secure the words where you want them, then scribble hard on the right side of the printout.  This will transfer the graphite from the back to the surface underneath, and you’ll have a perfect guide to paint over. 

Believe it or not, this is just the transfer.  It worked out better than I expected. For the calendar grid, I just used a level with a rule on the side and marked out my lines.  If I had been a bit smarter, I would’ve allowed one more week so I’d have plenty of room for staggered weeks.  But this works, even if I do occasionally have to circle back around to the top or do 30/31 on a single square. 

          After I got all the lines and letters penciled on, I painted over them with acrylic using a toothpick.  The calendar lines proved to be a little too much for my patience, though, and I resorted to sharpie.  If you’re going to use sharpie, make sure you know exactly where you want your lines.  I messed up and drew my lines all the way down, even though I wanted to leave a space at the bottom for the name of the month.  I thought, “No big deal.  I’ve got some paint left.  I’ll just paint over it.”  No.  No, I won’t.  Sharpie bleeds.  It bled through three coats of paint.  Finally, around the fourth coat, it was faint enough to where I was satisfied. 

     After I got everything painted or drawn, I went over it with two coats of chalkboard paint. 

This stuff is pretty cool.  You can even use it on metal or plastic, and anything becomes a chalkboard.    

          The original idea was to stop there and just have the whole surface of the fridge chalkboard.  I have wet erase markers that I use for keeping inventory of what’s in my freezer and pantry, and I figured I’d just use wet erase markers on the fridge and let Little color with chalks to keep him out from under my feet.  But as it turned out, chalks don’t show up that great on sap green.  If you look *really* closely in the next picture, you can just make out the numbers on the calendar.

I happened to have a chalkboard decal that I was going to put up in Little’s room, but it didn’t stick to the walls well enough.  He peeled it off and proceeded to color on the walls instead.  At least it was with chalk.  So I rolled it up, stuck it in the closet and forgot about it, until the day we test drove chalks on the fridge.  We stuck it on very carefully, and then I did a couple of coats of chalkboard paint over it to keep it on.  There will be no peeling this off anymore. 

     After cleaning the chalk off, I tried using the wet erase markers.  This is where I learned yet another lesson and had to take another detour in my design.  Wet erase marker does not erase completely off of chalkboard paint.  It leaves ghosts behind, and they’re not insignificant.  They are perfectly legible, blatant, staring at you going “nanny nanny boo boo” while you glare at them in futile frustration.  Or maybe they only say that to me, but I heard it! 

     I had to paint over all the ghosts, which has left slightly different color patches on the grocery list and calendar area.  I gave up on the inventory, because that will need such constant maintenance, I think it will just be easier to hang the sheets on the fridge.  At least those I can be certain work.  The next thing we tried was polyurethane.  I only painted the grocery list area and the calendar area with poly.  The rest is still chalkboard, and is a huge success with my Little. 

     When I first tested the wet erase markers on the polyurethaned areas, the color sort of shrunk in on itself to the point where it was illegible.  Have you ever watched oil on the surface of water when you drop dish soap in?  It was like that, only in reverse.  So I got dry erase markers.  That works, but if they dry more than an hour or so, you have to have some kind of solvent to get the ink off.  I tried alcohol and water, and that works pretty well, so I keep a spray bottle on top of the fridge and a rag in the marker basket.  The baskets are just Hobby Lobby half off specials.  I think I paid a dollar each for them.  I got some command hooks and a pack of magnets, and glued the magnets to the command hooks.  They’re plenty strong enough for chalks, markers, erasers, etc., but not quite strong enough for the little spray bottle. 

     Today, while I was typing this up, I decided to take a picture of what the wet erase marker does on the polyurethane, so I wrote on the grocery list bit so there would be a side-by-side comparison.  How about it didn’t do it today?  I guess it needed to be completely cured before the wet erase ink wouldn’t react with the oil?  I don’t have the foggiest idea, but the wet erase markers appear to work just fine on it now that it’s been over a week.  

Things I’ve learned: 

*Sharpie bleeds through three coats of latex paint, so use four or more if you need to cover some up. 

*Wet erase marker leaves ghosts on chalkboard paint. 

*Polyurethane apparently needs more than 24 hours to cure before using wet erase marker on it successfully.

*Polyurethane is like water.  There will be drips and runs, no matter how hard you try to be neat and achieve perfection.  I imagine I could clean them up with mineral spirits, but that would mess up my paint, and frankly, I think I am the only one who really cares about the drips and runs, so I'm trying to teach myself a lesson in acceptance LOL. 

*Dry erase markers do not dry erase off polyurethane after they’ve been allowed to sit for more than a few hours, but alcohol and water will take it off. 

*Chalkboard paint could be addictive...