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| My Grown Up Study Board |
Over Christmas, I found my way to Eskimo Joe's for cheese fries and a stroll around Stillwater, Oklahoma. On the drive around town, we passed Chuck's Paints. I had been thinking about how much I missed my old study board. So, I stopped in Chuck's to see if they even sold the boards and polyurethane. To my delight I had a board, directions, and polyurethane in under 10 minutes. I hauled it home to Texas and started my "grown-up" study board.
I started with finding the perfect fabric. My first board's fabric wore so thin that I could not repair it, so this time I chose a medium upholstery weight fabric.
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| Painting my board |
The board comes sanded, so I coated it with a few layers of gesso and traced out my design. Over a few days I layered on my new design.
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| Pouring the polyurethane. |
When I was happy with my design, I hauled it to the garage for the polyurethane pour. I used Ultra-Glo by Environmental Technology. The lady at Chuck's told me to stir the pour 300 strokes. I followed her directions. 300 strokes and then poured.
Lots of blowing through straws to get out the air bubbles. All was going well until I realized that even in January my garage still has gnats and other floaty things. (Dust free is a better place to pour.) I managed to remove the gnats, but the dust became a part of the board.
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| Blowing through straws to get out the bubbles. |
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| The bag lining. |
While I gave the pour 48 hours to dry, I did some high level geometry to make the bag lining for the bottom. I wanted the bottom to be around 5 1/2" thick, since I am tall and didn't want to hunch over the board. The next picture is a ROUGH sketch of how to cut and sew your fabric to make the bottom section.
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| Fabric is green and the board is brown. |
I attached the bottom with upholstery tacks. I bought the black ones at Hobby Lobby. They were not as strong as the wood of the board. So, I had to drill small holes to get the tacks started. One went crocked and cracked the top of the finish. :(
I stuffed the board with bean bag fill from Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
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| Finished board |
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| Finished bottom |
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| My original board was blue with my name and DZ on it. Picture from about 1990. |
Now my kids and husband want a board!
