DIY: Chalkboard Wall & Trompe l’oiel Window

Most of our house is a little over 130 years old… but my office, the pantry, our bedroom, & walk-in closet are part of a later addition around the turn of the century. The former back window in the kitchen was converted to a built-in (that holds all of our spices, baking extracts, and some of my antique jars and whatnot) and the back side is this boring wall, with a weird bump-out where the original stone windowsill protrudes from the drywall or plaster (or drywall over plaster, most likely).

For this project, we’re going to put the window back! Sort of. I’m painting most of the wall with chalkboard paint to make a giant bulletin board/sketchpad/to-do list, with a tromp l’oiel window in the middle. I don’t have a master plan, but we’re going to sketch out the old “ghost” window with some painter’s tape and just make it up as we go, yeah? I’m sure it will be FINE. Let’s do this!

My desk faces this wall, which was the rear wall of the original house before the back addition was put on sometime around the turn of the century. It’s masonry covered in drywall and probably plaster underneath, and there’s a stone sill on what was originally the back kitchen window that was cleverly turned into a built-in hutch. I decided that I would turn it back into a “window” and the rest into a chalkboard wall to help organize my ever-growing to-do lists of projects, goals, and sketches. I’m pretty happy with how it came out (although those trees… aren’t my best work. Eventually I will rework them or turn them back into clouds… we’ll see. But for now, it’s a vast improvement over the boring off-white semi-gloss wall, and was a pretty easy project!