White Board Command Station

The hubs and I are always trying to coordinate our schedules with our 4 kids' events.  After missing appointments or not knowing where the other spouse was, we decided to get more organized.  Hubs really wanted a white board, "like a huge one, babe, at least 4 feet wide and like, 6 feet tall!" and I fought it, knowing it'd look tacky.  

Here's what I made instead:

While grabbing supplies at trusty Home Depot for this project, Kris and I spied large white boards on clearance, just $5.50 for a 48" x 52" board.  We were buying wood anyway so we grabbed 2 additional 8' pieces of molding priced at $3/ea and I knew the hubs would be excited to help me assemble our "Command Station".

That night I went to our son's preschool orientation and was happily surprised to see the hubs had assembled the first step of the white board:

This spot in my house is just off the kitchen, the entry to the dining room.  Perfect spot for our "command station".  While hubs was at work the next day, I hit nap time hard and finished up the project.  I wanted to surprise him in return.

Here's what I did...and I'm proud to say I [mostly] did it without my hubby's help...he only trimmed out the white board, the rest was all me.  [And can I just say I'm now in love with his brad nailer??-I was looking for new things I could nail together cuz it's ridiculously fun to use!!]  What was I saying?  Oh yeah...

Okay I liked the hub's simple frame idea okay, but it was just that...okay.  It needed a chunkier look, to really fill up that wall.  I knew I had a smidge of leftover trim from my board & batten treatment and luck provided the random 6" x 5' scrap wood in my garage.  Score!

I started out by brad nailing the trim to the piece of wood.  Next step was painting the frame, wood/trim a blue gray color I had leftover from my front door [note to self, post the front door re-do!] then I glazed it all.  I brad nailed the white board frame directly to the wall, did the same to the self-made molding underneath.

I had the hook set from Ikea...although their furniture is cheap, they have the best organizational items and linens, I'll give them that!  Anyway, I was at Ikea a few weeks ago just for fun and grabbed 2 hook sets, one for swim suits for the kid's bathroom & the other just in case since it's a great price [$9.99 for 5 hooks!].  After I brad nailed the molding into the wall, I screwed in 5 more screws for extra strength for the future backpacks then covered the marks with the actual hooks.  Camo duribility=awesome.

I had that swirly accent thing for years now, I just knew it would come in handy some day so I simply hung it with screws to top it all off.  Love the finished product.

Cost for entire project: $5.50 for the white board + $7 for white board molding.  Smokin price for everything the Command Station organization will do for our family of 6.
.   .   .   .   . 

PS: Check back Wednesday for 3 full tutorials on how I created a dry erase marker storage plus a simple cork board how to.