I remember growing up and my parents marking my height on the inside of the kitchen pantry door. I loved seeing how much I’d grown, and especially when I outgrew my older sister. They had marked my height since I was little. When they moved, they repainted the whole house, but made sure that the height marks were not painted over.
I loved that they tracked my height, and I wanted to find a way to track my sons height too. Knowing that we will probably move before he’s grown up, I wanted to find a way to track his height with something portable so it could move with us. But I wanted something that was more then just a paper on the wall. I checked out Etsy and Pinterest. I saw some adorable Growth Charts that looked like giant rulers made out of wood. They were exactly what I was looking for, but the price ranged from $50-100 before tax and shipping was added in! That was more then I was hoping to pay, so we decided to try to make one ourselves. It turned out better then I thought it would so I thought I’d share it with ya’ll in case anyone else wanted to try to make one too! It cost us about $20 to make, and even though it’s not perfect I love that we made it together.
Supplies:
- Fence Post (We bought a sturdy wood one from Lowes for about $4.)
- Sanding Sheets (We bought cheap ones from Lowes that attach to our electric drill to make it easy.)
- Stain (Ours was about $8 from Lowes in “Espresso” color to match his furniture.)
- Acrylic Paint Pens (They are only about $2 each from Walmart. We bought 2 different colors.)
- Stencils (We bought a pack of them for $3 from Target.)
**Links posted are to affiliate links that I receive a small commission from, not the actual products I used. They are similar though. The actual products I used are listed in the parenthesis.
Process:
- Sanding the fence post to make sure he doesn’t get any splinters. We choose a fence post because it was the exact height, length and width we were looking for anyways so we didn’t need to cut it.
- Staining the wood. It took about 3 coats to get the look we wanted. Just make sure not to put it in direct sunlight to dry. (We made that mistake, and with the Texas heat, it made the stain bubbles up and we had to re-sand, and re-stain it to get rid of the bubbles.)
- Measuring out the board to create the tick marks. We started at half a foot and went to 6 1/2 feet. The 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 inch marks were 1 inch long. The 3 & 9 inch marks were 1 1/2 inches long. And the 6 & 12 inch marks were 2 inches long.
- We used stencils to make the numbers and his name. I let my husband choose the font. We made the tick marks and numbers in blue, and his name in white. His measurements will also be in white. You could freehand the numbers and name, but I wasn’t confident in my handwriting and figured it would look nicer with a stencil.
And that’s it! All done!
Hint: It took us awhile because we tried to just regular paint to paint the tick marks, numbers and name. It kept turning out smeared and uneven. I then found the acrylic paint pens. They worked SO much better. They created clean lines and were much easier to work with. I highly recommend getting them instead of trying to do it with paint brushes. Plus it is easier to use the paint pens to mark their height and write the date and age with.
(Brax pointing to his awesome new growth chart. We are aiming to measure him at least every 6 months, if not more often during growth spurts.)
Next project will probably be a train table!
(I wish I had taken more before, during and after pictures, but to be honest I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. I really love it now though!)