Week Nine: Freezer Upgrade

For Christmas, we asked for money to put towards a freezer. Mike and I have wanted to get a freezer to put in the furnace room since we moved into this house, but it always seems to fall to the bottom of the to-buy list. For Christmas, we got the money!

So we bought......nothing. We ended up putting the cash into our savings account because we just couldn't pull the trigger on a freezer. We started to wonder if we would get enough use out of it now that my massive breast milk stockpile in our regular freezer is dwindling.

Then, in a serendipitous turn of events, my great great uncle Richard sold his cabin. When my grandparents were there helping him clear it out, they happened upon an old freezer that still works! Since I'm obviously their favorite grandchild {or at least their favorite grandchild that is in the market for a freezer} they grabbed it for me AND delivered it to my house!

So now I have a freezer sitting in the middle of my basement, waiting to be fit into the overcrowded furnace room {didn't really think that part through}. The past few nights I've been really admiring how ugly it is. And it doesn't have to be pretty, I mean, it's an appliance we're going to keep in the furnace room with the spiders and the kitty litter. But my crafty brain switched on and I had an idea.

In a perfect world, I would have an upright freezer. But here in reality, where I have a free chest freezer, that just isn't the case. I wanted to avoid the chest style freezer because I didn't want to lose things buried under other stuff and forget what we even have in there.

So, that's where my crafty brain took over. I decided that I simply don't have enough chalk board in my life. {I've told you guys before that I love a good bandwagon, right?} I was recently reminded of this when my friend Dawn posted on her blog about an awesome kitchen island makeover. Hint: it involved chalk board.

So I decided it would be awesome to paint the entire lid of the chest freezer with chalkboard paint! Not only will I get my chalk board fix and have some fun, but I'll also be able to keep track of what's in the freezer.

We are still deciding if we will have some sort of grid with check marks to indicate how much of each item we have, a simple list, or even a list/diagram combo just for fun.

In any event, it was an easy DIY and I think it will be wonderfully useful as well!

Here's how it went:

Luckily I didn't need to prime it. I did two coats and then after it dried over night I rubbed chalk on and erased it. Martha Stewart told me to. 

Finished Product! 

Pretty fun, right? I think it will be super useful, too! Getting out the chalkboard paint has also inspired another project that I might have to complete in the next couple weeks, so stay tuned for that. :)

-H