Home office make-over - the whiteboard wall - reveal

Home office make-over, oh what a long, drawn out project you have been. But now you can stick a fork in it. It is done.

Our office is set up with the desks facing each other to form an island in the middle of the room and then behind each desk we have a feature wall. As in walls I want to feature here on the blog. Today i am showing the wall behind Frank with our new whiteboard and storage cabinet. You can also read about my word of the year (or years to come more likely) and I have included the sources for everything that I could still find available. (Amazon links are affiliate)

A couple of years ago, we had the carpet ripped out and installed a quick click laminate floor in a dark walnut color. Then for the next couple years we had some old shelving units on this wall, but then last year we realized two things: 1 - the shelving unit was mostly used for decorative display and did not need to hold very much stuff because we also have two full closets for paper and other supplies, and 2 - we really needed a place to share our thoughts when we are bouncing ideas around while discussing new functionality for the software we develop.

We made the whiteboard ourselves by buying a cheap white table top at IKEA and applying a whiteboard sticker. The roll of sticky whiteboard, I learned, happened to be just a hair wider than the table top and a couple inches longer. We cut it down to fit for length and applied it. On the back of the board we routed the backing to attach some keyhole hangers that we got at the hardware store. See picture above, right.

THEN we had this awesome face palm moment realizing that IKEA already sells glossy table tops. So you could definitely save the sticker step and just add the key hole hangers. And, you know ... be done.

Now, I don't know if the glossy table top will wipe clean just as nicely as the real whiteboard surface on ours, but I would venture to guess that it would be just fine. The pricing comes out to about the same as the glossy table top is more expensive than the regular white table top and the whiteboard sticker is pretty cheap.

After we hung the table top and set up the storage unit, I thought it needed something on top of the whiteboard. Something wood colored. I found these blond wood letters and started brain storming for a good word.

The thing that resonated most with me is a reflection of how I want to live my life. Simply. Not too much fuss. Giving me time to focusing on the fun.

Now, I do realize that there is a juxtaposition in wanting organization and simple living and then at the same time blogging about making 10 favorite handmade Christmas ornaments. Don't judge. So the word "simplicated" did float around in my mind for a bit (simply+complicated). Then I thought some more about it and simplified it to simply. I could go into a novel length string of thoughts about the whole thing, but enough about that.

When I started styling the storage unit, it all just seemed so white to me. Bland. It needed a hit of black for contrast, so I found this free print of Europe. Isn't it pretty. The original print is white with black lines. I imported it into the Photoshop and clicked Shift+Ctrl+I to inverse the black and white. Then I sized it and printed it out and framed it.

One of the things I spent quite some time searching for, were pretty dry erase markers. The dry-erase-marker-makers of the world mostly do not have a designer on staff. I don't think. Then I found these markers from Poppin. So much happiness. I like that the are cylindrical and simple. I ended up buying quite a lot of stuff from them for the other parts of the office. So many pretty things. I experienced a Target-like level of difficulty stopping myself from adding more and more to my cart as I was shopping there.

The search for a pretty whiteboard eraser was even more difficult than finding pretty markers. And I never found one that was just white. This one has a bit of green on the sides. It works very well, but since when is a whiteboard eraser ever a function-over-form item? Never, amIright?

Here is the mood board for the space and sources under that.

And the dry erase board is already being put to good use. This week it was trig and some html - unrelated.

And that is, simply put, that.