DIY Whiteboard for under $50
Start–ups can get by with very little. The saw horse desk. Garage as office. Stealing your neighbor’s wireless. There’s a lot of ways to be scrappy. But I know very few start-ups who are able to get by without a whiteboard. For years, I’ve often heard folks say, “Those are so expensive! Isn’t there a cheaper alternative?”
Turns out there is. It’s called Tileboard, Melamine or Showerboard. Special thanks to Scott Doorley, Dave Baggeroer and Erika Basu from the d.school for pointing me in the direction on this one. I purchased a 4′ x 8′ sheet at Pine Cone Lumber for $25. You can get it at most large hardware stores.
There’s one issue. Typically, the Melamine is attached to flimsy Masonite or particle board. So unless you want to screw it into the wall, you need to reinforce it. These instructions show you how to create a 4’ x 8’ whiteboard with minimal effort for about $40-50. It’ll take a little time (a couple of hours – most of which is waiting), but if you are cash strapped, it’s a good alternative.
This was particularly effective solution for Kicker since we needed a mobile whiteboard that was light, easy to move and carry up and down stairs. It’s something we can prop up against a wall, window, or stash behind a desk when not in use.
For the next iteration we’re trying to make it faster and with less glue.
Download the instructions. (1MB)
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4 Comments
water based contact cement is available at most big box stores and works just as well as the toxic stuff. Just a little fyi
I did my basement with these sheets of wall board in my old house (and getting ready to do it in the new house). Something to watch out for is expansion due to humidity (I’m in western NY). Originally I attached most of them with screws to studs around the perimeter and covered the screws with drywall or trim. Two of them I glued to the studs. After the first summer, all the screwed boards had bulged out. This will happen with any perimeter type mounting, unless your frame flexes enough to not let the board distort.
This time around I’m gluing to the walls.
We had these on our walls at my previous employer’s office. One thing though – it wasn’t nearly as forgiving when erasing many of the markers out there. Different brand markers yielded different results, but most of them were quite hard to erase, without using a LOT of elbow grease and/or a pretty heavy duty cleaner. After a short while, there were ghost images all over the board from previous writings that never quite went away. It also seemed the longer we left something written on it before erasing, the harder it was to erase.
This may have been due to the particular type of board he got, but I remember it being very annoying, and kinda defeated the purpose since it was so hard to quickly wipe off in a moment of inspiration.
Rubbing alcohol (isopropanol) can erase Sharpies from white board. Forget the expensive dry-erase markers and elbow grease.
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[...] Tom sent us this take on the DIY whiteboard project – These instructions show you how to create a 4’ x 8’ whiteboard with minimal effort for about $40-50. It’ll take a little time (a couple of hours – most of which is waiting), but if you are cash strapped, it’s a good alternative. Clearly illustrated PDF instructions available here – DIY Whiteboard for under $50 [...]
[...] Clearly illustrated PDF instructions available here – DIY Whiteboard for under $50 [...]
[...] make, DIY Page A+Featured DIYs, Business, Consumer, Cool, Design, desk, DoItYourself!, DoItYourself!, Educational, [...]
[...] people at Kicker Studio, where they wrote up a nice instruction manual that I found very useful, check it out. With the guide in hand I decided to get off my ass and make one. It only took a few hours to put [...]
[...] Tom sent us this take on the DIY whiteboard project – These instructions show you how to create a 4’ x 8’ whiteboard with minimal effort for about $40-50. It’ll take a little time (a couple of hours – most of which is waiting), but if you are cash strapped, it’s a good alternative. Clearly illustrated PDF instructions available here – DIY Whiteboard for under $50 [...]
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