Using Magnetic Paint To Make A Secret Magnet Wall: a house log
I never pictured myself painting a wall in our house black, let alone doing it at 5am. But that is what I found myself doing two weeks ago. Allow me to explain.
When our postcard wall moved into place last week, it meant our much enjoyed wallflowers above the desk had to be relocated…
… well, some stayed in place when we chose we liked leaning a few on the shelves of our postcard wall– but the rest needed a new home.
Well, they did not go far. We chose to move them simply one wall over to the small space under the office/guest room/playroom’s one and only big window.
Why? That is likely best explained by answering the “how” first. Instead of relying on the special nails that came with our magnetic wallflower kit- which firmly affix the arrangement in one spot thanks to the magnet-backed flowers which stick to the magnetized nail heads- we chose to try something new: magnetic paint (note: some of the new wallflower kits snap instead of being magnetized). We thought magnetic paint would be simply the thing for this project since we’d been dying to try it for years and were simply waiting for the right project. We frequently wondered if the rumors were true- did it truly work? We were about to find out.
See, by creating a large magnetic canvas we could design a spot where the wallflowers could be displayed, but instead of being limited to the fixed spots where we placed the magnetic pins in the wall, this time the wallflowers (along with any other magnets) could easily be moved around into an infinite number of lively formations, adding a pleasant element of “play” to our office/guest room/playroom- especially once Clara becomes mobile sufficient to move them around. And they are certainly at a kid-friendly height!
Luckily the magnetic paint rumors were true. Well, mostly – it is in fact magnetic primer. We found this $21 quart of Rust-oleum Magnetic Latex Primer at Home Depot (next to things like chalkboard paint, dry erase paint, and glow-in-the-dark paint). Update: Here is an affiliate link to it over on Amazon if you cannot find it in stores.
Oh and before heading home we noticed the instructions in fact suggested having it shaken by the store’s paint department to assist keep the iron particles from settling on the bottom – so do not forget to shake yours like crazy! The instructions also suggested two or three thin coats to achieve the best results as opposed to one or two thick and gloppy ones. Good to know.
Well… we did seven.
And we made sure they were all extremely thin so there was not any bump or delineation where the magnetic paint began or ended. Perhaps four extra applications were overkill, but we were determined to make this stuff work. Plus I realized only after coat number two or three that I was supposed to be vigorously stirring between each application. Oops. But since the coats dried truly fast it only took me an evening, a morning, and one random 5am painting session to apply all seven (Clara had woken us up for a surprise feeding- she typically sleeps from around 10pm to 9am!- so I figured I’d be productive while Sherry sleepily nursed her). And ultimately… drumroll please… it worked. Woo hoo!
Well, it mostly worked. After each coat I tested variously sized wallflowers to see if they would stay up. The smallest sizes stuck nearly immediately but despite my persistence I never could get the larger ones to stay in one spot (they’d simply slide down the wall, hit the baseboard, and fall off). So we’d say that magnetic primer works, but not with anything terribly heavy. Now you know why some ended up on the postcard shelves. Oh well – glad accident.
But in the good news category, despite the fact that we had simply painted a large black spot on our wall – it barely took two coats to cover it up fully with the original wall color (Glidden’s Sand White). Phew. Heart attack averted. And it did not seem to lose any of the magnetic attraction when covered with other non-magnetic paint. It is also 100% non-toxic and kid-safe when dry (obviously it is not safe for a kid to drink it in liquid form). We did keep Clara out of the room with the windows open and a fan on for the full drying period (and about three days after that since we happened to be out of town for the weekend anyway) simply to be safe.
Even though we could not get all of the wallflowers to stick, we are in fact truly glad with how it turned out. And we cannot wait to find some other lively magnets to put up there so Clara can play with them when she’s a bit older. Speaking of which – does anyone know where we could find an all-white set of those alphabet magnets? We googled around for a while with no luck- and we think they would be a lively and educational addition to the little slices of “playroom” that we are trying to squeeze into this small space for our go-to little girl.
Has anyone else tried magnetic primer? Or any of those other wacky chalkboard/dry erase/glow-in-the-dark paints? We’d enjoy to know what you folks thought about using those newfangled products. Did they work? Were they messy or hard to apply? Spill the beans.
Psst- Wanna follow the whole office/guest bedroom/playroom makeover? Click here for the intro post, here to read about the big sleeper sofa hunt, here for the Hands-on desk play-by-play, here for the homemade light fixture project, here for our hacked Ikea bookcase, here for the file storage we built, here for how we squeezed in some toy storage, here for how we picked out some Hands-on art that we could agree on, here for how we wrangled our wires, and here for the play-by-play of creating our postcard art wall.
