How To Clean Your Painted Chalkboard

One of the things I love about our smurf house is the painted chalkboard in the backyard. It’s about 7′ x 5′, I think. Total guesstimate here. The previous owners had a toddler as well and they built their own chalkboard wall with chalkboard paint, plywood and a wood frame. I don’t think they knew how to clean the board because when we moved in, it was still full of scribbles. We tried to use a regular chalkboard eraser – no luck. It just made smudges.

Fast forward to the summer, the guests at Spawn’s first birthday party had a blast scribbling on the chalkboard. And after the party, I still could not rub that stuff off. The good ol’ vinegar and water mixture did not work.

We dug around and tried a solution off the internet. A few articles said you could use Coca-Cola to clean a painted chalkboard. WHUT. I love regular Coke, and I wasn’t willing to waste delicious caffeinated Coke for this endeavor. However, I did have a ton of leftover Diet Coke from her party. Diet Coke is the devil.

I poured half a can of Diet Coke into my awesome Butterbeer mug, soaked a new rag and went to town on the chalkboard.

It started to work! Holy crap.

I stopped and had to rinse out the mug and rag. There was so much blue chalk on the chalkboard. I repeated this six times. Three cans of Diet Coke did the trick.

Halfway there!

I kept the flower up. Once the chalkboard was clean, I went back and soaked a rag in water and cleaned up any residual Diet Coke on the board.

Amazing, right?

This could be a post about how toxic Diet Coke is. What is it doing in your body if it can clean chalkboards? Well, it’s not that type of post though I stand by my opinion that Mexican Coke is the best and Diet Coke can suck it. 

Side note: We’re saving money to build an addition to our home. This will knock out the existing chalkboard wall, and we’ll have to build a new one. (It won’t happen for a while – do you know how much additions cost? Holy crap.)

In the meantime, tell me in the comments – have you wanted make your own chalkboard wall? Are you inspired with just a few pieces to build your own? 

Disclosure: Post contains affiliate links. Build your own painted chalkboard outside or maybe on an interior wall at home!