DIY Height Chart.

When Amelie was born my mum brought her a height chart which we dutifully measured her against on a regular basis.  Then one day Amelie and her cousin decided it would be a good idea to colour all over the walls including the height chart with felt tip pens and biro.  In my madness with them I made Amelie scrub the walls clean unfortunately in doing so she rubbed off all of her early year heights, not only this but it's not going to be long before she has outgrown her current height chart.  It had never occurred to me to make my own until I was reading Brooklyn Limestone and saw the beautiful wooden growth and milestone chart they had made, then a couple of days later I was flicking through the cox and cox catalouge and I saw a wooden ruler height chart.  It was then I decided I would make one for the girls.

Michael took a look through his "spare" wood collection and found me a piece of MDF which he cut to size for me.  As always Amelie was keen to be included so she helped me give it a coat of Yellow Annie Sloan Chalk paint.  We didn't specifically choose this paint we were just using up what we had left over from some chairs we painted not so long ago.

Once painted I used permanent black pens to write the numbers and mark the height increments.  The red indelible pen didn't really work so I had to carefully paint over the letters and numbers with some acrylic paint I had.  When I wasn't looking one afternoon Harriet scribbled all over it with blue pencil - luckily I managed to rub it off.  Finally I gave it a coat of lacquer.  I was a bit disappointed as the lacquer made some of the pen bleed but nothing too serious.  In hindsight I probably would have been better giving the board a coat of lacquer prior to writing on the numbers.  The pens would have worked more smoothly and the red wouldn't have been absorbed by the paint.

To give it the finishing touches Michael hung it on the wall for me and we marked off all of our heights against it.