DIY Striped Growth Chart

I love Pinterest, but then again who doesn’t?! If you’re like me, you probably have a board (or multiple boards) filled with projects you intend to do someday. I have a board called “Future Projects” that I have been adding to over the years and sadly, I haven’t even checked ONE of these projects off of my to-d0 list.

When the monthly DIY challenge group that I belong to with a few other talented bloggers chose “Pinterest-Inspired” as the theme for our July DIY challenge, I knew it would be just the motivation I needed to finally tackle one of my “future projects.”This project is certainly not an original idea, but it’s one that I have been meaning to make for YEARS. So before my kids get any taller, I finally made a growth chart (inspired by this one) to keep track of their growth over the years.

This project was SO easy and cheap to make. I can’t believe I waited so long to make one!

I started off by buying a 6′ long pine board at Lowe’s (no cutting necessary!). Once I was home, I beat it up a little with a screw driver and a hammer to make it look aged and then gave it a quick coat of Minwax Walnut stain.After that dried for about an hour, I marked and taped off 6 inch stripes and then painted them in using some BM Simply White I had leftover from another project.While the white paint was still wet, I peeled all of the tape off to prevent sticking. Then once the paint was dry, I used a set of stencils I picked up at Lowe’s for $5.99 to paint the numbers on. I used a dabbing method with a sponge brush to prevent the paint from bleeding under the stencil.Lastly, I gave it a quick sand down with a piece of 120 grit sandpaper to rough it all up a bit.The whole thing took me about 2 hours total, including the time it took the stain and paint to dry. The total cost was around $16 for the wood and stencils (we already had everything else at home).I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to hang it on the narrow wall in the hallway that leads to the kids’ rooms and it looks perfect there just as I imagined it would!In case you’re curious, the wall color is BM Revere Pewter, lightened by 25% and the wall art on the right is a framed map I made (you can read about it HERE).Not only is it really cute, but my kids love seeing how tall they are. I think it’s great that my daughter is taller than her brothers (they’re triplets)!