I knew I wanted a growth chart to document my son, Lincoln, as he grew up but knowing we weren't going to be in this home forever I wanted to make something we could take with us to our next home. We made this over the course of about 2-3 days and I'm absolutely in love with it. Plus, it was EASY.
So we already had this cedar wood fence panel in our garage and I knew it would be perfect. You could easily go to your local hardware store and pick one up.
My first step was to sand the wood down just a little bit before we did anything.
After sanding, we measured out each foot on the post.
I wanted blocks of white and blocks of stain on the chart so next we separated it into 6" sections. With a pencil we just drew the lines of the sections and wrote "white" in the boxes that were to be painted. The middle of each white box would be each foot.
TIP- make sure the measurement of the first foot is going to be a foot off the ground itself, not necessarily just a foot from the bottom of the wood. Since I knew our chart wouldn't be flush with the floor we had the 1ft mark actually only 6" from the bottom of the wood. When hung we made sure the bottom of the panel was 6" off the ground.
I should have used painters tape but I didn't have any so I just used some clear packing tape so it was a straight edge for the white boxes.
Once the white was dry, we hand painted on the numbers.
After that was completely dry I distressed the white boxes. This step is optional, just depends on the look you want when finished.
After it was distressed I spray painted the entire panel with a clear matte finish paint.
Once dry I rubbed an oak stain over the panel until I got my desired finish.
The last step was to just seal it and we used a clear gloss.
That's it! Super simple, and I'm in LOVE with the final product! You could absolutely use other stains or colors of paint to fit the decor in your home as well.
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