DIY: Whiteboard Door

I’ve been craving a big whiteboard in my house ever since I was a first-year teacher in rural Louisiana. There was an experienced teacher a few towns over who had whiteboards in his living room. They stretched across his walls, and he used them to lay out his master plan for the school year. I would stare at those whiteboards in complete awe and wish for my own personal system of part-inspiration and part-accountability.

Two cities and five homes later, I still didn’t have any whiteboards to call my own. Matt and I have been debating where to put one. We have two windows on nearly every wall, which makes it difficult to find a good patch for a whiteboard. It also has to be a place that we pass by often enough, and it has to be in a spot where we can easily access it with a marker in hand.

Finally, we figured it out: the bathroom door! It was a spot we can easily get to and spend time looking at while we wait for the shower to heat up. Here’s how we transformed our bathroom door into a centralized whiteboard for less than $20:

• Step One: We carefully measured the area we wanted to cover with a whiteboard.
• Step Two: We took our dimensions to Lowe’s and searched for a large piece of shower board. Shower board is the water-resistant material used to line the inside of showers. However, it can also function as a white board that can be used with dry erase markers. We ended up finding a $10 piece of white board, which we asked a Lowe’s employee to cut down to our exact specs.
• Step Four: We bought two packages of removable mounting strips (size large). Each package can hold 12 pounds, and we figured our board would be really secure with enough mounting strips to support 24 pounds.
• Step Five: We followed the directions on the package to adhere the strips to the back of the board.
• Step Six: We removed the paper backs from the removable strips and pressed the board into place.
• Voila!

In retrospect, it might have been better to pick a door that doesn’t get as much action. It will be easy to brush against our bathroom door whiteboard. So far, it’s working out well, although the door to our office might have been even better.