Growing up, my parents recorded me and my siblings' heights on a door frame. How fun it was to stand with heels to the wall and head up and feel that pen swipe across the top of my head and step away, hopeful, to see how much I'd grown since the last time.
In our family, we've continued this tradition, but the doorframe won't be able to make the move with us to the farm. So, despite the fact that I have way too much to do to be taking on a craft project, I just had to find the time for this one. Because it's now or never.
I needed to create a growth chart that could move with us from house to house and that I could transfer our old markings onto before we move.
Here's what I did.
Select a board. A 1x works great. Whatever width you like would work fine. I think mine is a 1x8.
Cut it to 6 feet long. Then, begin the most tedious work . . . marking out the measurements. I wanted my chart to measure by the inch, so I had a lot of measuring and marking to do. **Remember to allow for your floorboard once the chart is hung!** I decided to allow 6 inches of clearance at the bottom of my board. So, even though the board is only 6 feet long, the bottom of it will hang 6" off the floor and the measurements have been adjusted to allow for that so that the board will measure someone up to 6'6". It's hard to imagine any of my kiddos outgrowing this board!
There are many different ways I could have created the numbers, but I decided to call on my good friend who has a Silhouette machine. I've never seen one of these things in action, and I needed to catch up with her anyway. It had been too long since our last get-together!
The machine cut the numbers out of cardstock, creating a stencil. You could use paint but, since I wanted my markings black anyway, I opted to use a Sharpie.
So that my numbers and measurement markings would look integrated into the wood grain, I stained the board, then added my markings, sanded, and stained again.
To distress the wood a bit, I beat it up some with the corner of my metal ruler before staining. This allowed the stain to settle differently into those grooves and create a more uneven finish. (Whoever would've thought we'd be trying to make a new project look old or a pristine board look damaged?)
For hanging ease, I flipped my board over and placed the hanger so that a screw or nail at exactly 5'6" off the floor will hang the board in the correct spot . . . and I wrote that on the back so that I would remember!
I love the way it turned out!
Now all that's left to do is transfer all the doorframe markings over to the new board!
(Thanks, Jessica, for your help on this project and the Silhouette tutorial. What a cool machine! :)