My Grown Up Study Board

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.

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.

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.

Blowing through straws to get out the bubbles.

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.

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.

Finished board

Finished bottom

My original board was blue with my name and DZ on it.  Picture from about 1990.

Now my kids and husband want a board!