We have talked about getting giant dry erase boards to cover the walls of our office. We never seem to have enough space on our little board to write down all of the to do list as well as our ideas and sketches.  So after having talked about for a good 6 months we finally just did it! For about $50 we got two walls covered with 4’X8′ white boards.

First thing first, the supplies: thrifty white board, dry wall screws and that’s it! The white board we got is from Homedepot.  According to richsipe’s comments on lifehacker.com the Homedepot version of the white board product line holds up better over time.  We generally prefer the “orange buggy store” so that is where we got all of our supplies.

 

 

 

Now, all we did was (1) measure, for the kid’s side of the office we mounted the board just 18 inches above the floor, for us it was a bit higher. Making a few points on the wall to act as guides to make sure the board is level.

(2) Pre-drill started holes. These were small (we use 3/32″ bit) and while I held the board up, Luke drilled through the board and the drywall all around the perimeter about 1 inch from the edge and about every 2-3 feet. (3) Then setting the board down we drilled the dry wall anchor holes with 1/4″ bit and (4) inserted the drywall anchors, sometimes with a help of our rubber mallet but careful not to damage the drywall anchor.

And the 5th and final step, hold the board back up line up the holes and screw in the dry wall screws. Our screw head was plenty big so we did not require washers. Others might need to add a washer but that is it! Less then 2 hours later we were ready to draw and were wondering why didn’t we do this sooner?

 

As we were doing our research for this DIY we stumbled on a teacher who made the desks in the classroom all dry erase using these same panels! Love the idea and might do that to my craft table one of these days.