Industrial Rivet Chalkboard

I am guilty of such dreams, but I have never done a knock off of my own. Until today. An Industrial Rivet Chalkboard Knock Off.

A few weeks back I fell in love with Restoration Hardware’s industrial rivet chalkboard, it was simple and just cool industrial. Obviously my wallet could not afford the price tag $399, so I set off to make my own. As luck would have it my friend had given me some old windows that she had removed from her basement. Even though she gave me several I just used one for this project and it was the perfect size!

Now this baby was not made of metal like RH’s version, and it also wasn’t as thin on the edges. As long as I could get the look and feel of RH’s piece then I was good. I went to work…

I removed the rubber strip and the metal thingy. Then cleaned it up and gave the glass 3 or 4 coats of chalkboard paint.

Once the last coat of paint was dry I set out to create my fake metal and rivet corners. I chose a scrap piece of chipboard 1/4 inch thick and drew on a pattern using the window frame as a guide (far left photo). To save time I stacked three more pieces of chipboard under the patterned board, clamped them down, and started cutting out the pattern with my jigsaw (middle). When all four corners were cut, I kept them together to sand the edges smooth (far right).

Not too bad, obviously thicker than the original, but the right size for the window frame. You can also see I filled in the crack where the rubber thing was with spackle.

Next up was gluing down the corner pieces, I used Gorilla wood glue and set one on each corner of the window frame. Then, to avoid splitting the wood, I drilled holes for my upholstery tacks. Before I hammered in the tacks, I added a dab of hot glue, to make sure they would be nice and secure.