Hacking the Perfect Office Accessory
For all you startup entrepreneurs or work at home types – this is the perfect project for you. A quick and inexpensive (<$30) way to make a whiteboard for your office. Check out my how to guide below.
White Board Hack
Supplies:
Most of these supplies can be found at your local hardware store, we found our supplies at Lowes
- 1 8ft x 4ft piece of shower board (also called tile board or white gloss hardboard) [$12.99]
- 3 pieces of 8ft shower board pvc end caps [3 x $2.28]
- Light/Medium Adhesive of choice – I prefer a glue gun [free]
- Wall adhesive of choice – we used Command picture hanging strips (2 packages of the large size = 8 strips to be extra safe) [2 x $4.26], you could also adhere the board directly to your wall with Construction Adhesive [around $5.00]
Instructions:
- Gather your supplies
- Attach two of the 8ft end caps to the board on the longest sides using the light/medium adhesive of choice.
- Cut the remaining piece in half to fit the shorter sides & attach (you may have to trim a bit extra off of the sides to ensure a good fit between the two longer end caps) using your adhesive.
- Allow the glue to fully dry before attempting to hang on wall.
- Apply wall adhesive of choice to wall/board per the instructions & attach to wall.
- Enjoy your new white board. It works best with high quality dry erase markers & erasers. For any stubborn spots that won’t erase, use a small amount of rubbing alcohol and a soft cloth to gently clean the board.
Illustrated step by step guide:
1. First gather your supplies. Pictured here is the light/medium adhesive, whiteboard pvc end caps, and whiteboard (ie showerboard). Not pictured here are the Command Adhesive strips – you can check those out over here on Amazon.com
2. Next slide on the 8ft end caps to the long sides of the white board. They are super easy to slide on – I didn’t even end up needing to use the glue as they were super tight. Gauge yours to see if you will need the glue or not.
3. After you slide the end caps on the long sides, you will have to cut the remaining end cap to fit onto the shorter sides. This is probably the hardest part of the project. You can cut them a little and then snap them at the cut point – that seemed to be the easiest to me! When you get to a corner you may have to pull the end cap open a little further to fit over the other end cap. They will fit, it just takes a little maneuvering.
4. If you use glue (which I didn’t) allow the glue to dry before going to step 5
5. Once all of the end caps were on attach the Command adhesive strips to the back of the whiteboard. Try to space them out evenly (unlike me!).
5 cont. Last step is to hold the board up where you would like to hang it. I recommend marking it where you want it (make sure it’s level) – the command adhesive strips can be removed but then you will need to buy more! Once you have the location marked, remove the paper backing from the other side of the Command adhesive strips (shown in white above) and press onto the wall in the desired location. Hold for a few minutes to ensure a tight lock. Your new whiteboard is now ready to be used & enjoyed!
6. Enjoy your new board – I also made a whiteboard for the guys over at Buzztastic for their new office at Atlanta Tech Village. They are really digging it (as you can see from the picture below).
@lcfire
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- Hacking the Perfect Office Accessory - January 23, 2013
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The only problem I've had with these is that eventually you just cant get the residual color off without using nasty solvents. But since that takes a couple of years, and you can never have too many whiteboards, this does really work.
There's also "whiteboard" wallpaper that is pretty nifty spiffy.
Thanks for the comment! I had no idea that the color eventually won't come off. We've only had ours up for a couple of months!
Something that we've been doing around our office is using Rust-Oleum Gloss White Dry Erase Paint Kit.
Something that we've been doing around our office is using Rust-Oleum Gloss White Dry Erase Paint Kit.
Interesting, when I looked at the picture closely I realized that I have worked with the guy on the left (Jeremy)