DIY Ruler Growth Chart

Well ya'all...progress is cranking right along in Colton's future big boy room.  In fact, with the exception of a dresser, all elements are ready to be put up!  So, hopefully, said dresser can be purchased and we can get this room done within the week...fingers crossed.
In the meantime, I figured I'd share with you another DIY project I conquered for the room.
 I knew all along that I wanted Colton to have some sort of growth chart in his room, but as with a lot of other things, I really could not find one in stores or online that both met my budget and was something I actually liked!  Luckily, Pinterest was available to come to my rescue once again in the form of this DIY ruler growth chart.
In case you're not in this for the tutorial, I'll go ahead and give you the image of my final product, just resting away on the wall waiting to be hung up (pardon the mess around it please!):

This project was super easy, really affordable, and honestly may be one of my all-time favorites.  I can't wait to get Colton's little tush up against that thing and measure him away:)
So if you are interested in creating your own, here are all the DIY details.  For my ruler, I needed:

• 1x6x6 wood board ($7)
• walnut colored stain (had on hand...FREE!)
• paper towels (again had on hand...FREE!)
• black paint pen ($4)
• black Sharpie (on hand...FREE!)
• clear ruler (had on hand...FREE!)
• tape measure (once again, had on hand...FREE!)
• numbers 1-6 printed in Century font, size 250

So after shelling out my $11 and rounding up all of my supplies, I headed out to the back porch to give my wood board a light sanding (I don't know if this was necessary, but I reasoned it couldn't hurt!) and apply my stain.  I went the cheapo route and just used some paper towels to rub the stain in.  I actually really liked the result...I feel like it gave the wood a darker/richer tone.  Plus, I only needed to use one coat of stain that way...SCORE!

Once my wood had dried overnight, I hauled it inside and got to work marking it up.  To do so, I laid my trusty tape measure alongside the wood board.  My board was 6 feet tall, but because I wanted to hang it six inches from the ground, I had to start marking the board at the 6 inch line and finish at 6 1/2 feet.  I used my clear ruler to mark the feet first, drawing 4 inch lines with a black sharpie.  If you look real close, you can see the process started below:

Once the feet lines were drawn, I went back and drew 3 inch lines to mark the half foot lines.  From there, I filled in quarter foot lines (by drawing 2-inch lines), and then marked the remaining inch lines with simple 1-inch lines.  A lot of marking later, my board looked something like this:

The last step to creating my ruler was to go through and add the numbers.  To do so, I positioned each number on the board where I wanted it.  I traced over it with a pen, pushing down extra hard, to leave an indentation in the wood.  After that was done, I was ready to go back through with my black paint pen and fill in each number.  And just for fun, I decided to go back over my lines with the black paint pen as well.

That's it...while it may sound time consuming, it was actually really simple.  Aside from drying time, the whole thing took me about 30 minutes...all with the Real Housewives on in the background to keep me company!

Now, to go hunt down a dresser so my little man can get into his new room!