Make Your Own Marbled Looking Chess Board

You can have a marbled looking chessboard without having to spend a whole lot of money. In fact, you can make the chessboard out of some interesting materials.

The only tools that will be required are a saw, sandpaper, painter's tape, a one-inch paintbrush, a liner paintbrush, ruler, pencil and an X-Acto knife. The materials you will need are marbled gray and marbled white paint. You can choose any other two colors but these will look really sharp together.

The other materials you will need are some type of sealer and some black paint for bordering the board. And let's not forget the quarter inch thick board to make this out of.

Some calculating will need to be done to come up with the dimensions of the board. The playing area is eight by eight squares, so that comes to 64 squares in all. If each square is an inch and a half wide and long the playing area is 12" square.

To make this a fancy board add a 1/32" black trim around the playing field, some open space to place the pieces taken during game play, and a second border around the edge of the board. Two inches of spacing should suffice, which brings the total board size to 16 ¼" leaving the outside trim at 3/32" wide.

You may be lost at this point, but hold on, this will make more sense as you start painting in everything. Go ahead and cut the board to size, then sand it down well, and wipe off all the debris for the paint to adhere well to the board.

Once the board is ready to be painted use the pencil and ruler to mark off the edging, interior trim and the playing field. Tape off the squares in such a way that you can paint one color at a time. This way you have time to allow either the gray or white squares to dry as you prepare to tape off to paint the others.

You may need to look at a checker or chessboard somewhere to see where the dark squares are located verses the lighter ones. If you have a steady hand you can paint along the lines you drew in on the board, and fill in the squares. This will be a good way to add your own flair to marbling.

Once the playing field is dry, tape off to the outside edge of the interior trim, and tape over the edge trim of the board. Now you are ready to paint the outer field. Use the gray color so that the white squares stand out. Go ahead, be bold and paint it in. Let this dry well.

All that is left now is to paint in the trim. This gives it a professional look. Tape along the edges and make sure the tape is straight. Square it off well at the corners, and start painting in the black color. Don't forget to paint this black on the side edge of the board, too.

After this dries peel off the tape. I like using a spray lacquer over painted wood. If you would rather use a brush on type, this will turn out fine as well. Let this dry well and you will have a masterful looking chessboard.