Blog

   

Around the House: Repurposed Message Board

We’re loving our new hallway organization, but as I mentioned in that last post, I still felt like something was missing. Namely, a message area. See when Brett and I lived in our first apartment together, we had a whiteboard in our living room area that we used all the time to leave notes, make lists, and draw pictures just for fun. And I wanted to find a way to bring that here, but without the whiteboard, which can look a little dorm-room if you aren’t careful.

So I was ecstatic to stumble across a solution while thrift-shopping with my mother in law a couple weeks ago. I found this fantastic antique frame, glass in, but with no backing. Perfect!

And it fit like a dream in the hallway, just opposite our little organization area. Here is the space before:

And after:

I am so happy with it! I just used the top of the frame to balance a little dry-erase marker and it’s the perfect solution for a more grown-up looking white board. Speaking of white, I debated painting the frame itself white to tie into the white frames across the hall, but ultimately decided to leave its vintage gold look for a couple of reasons. First, gold is coming back these days. Not brassy 90s gold, but antique pretty gold, and this is definitely the latter. Second, I like the vintage look of the frame the way it is, and I worried that glossy white (combined with a marker and drawings of my cat) might totally defeat the anti-dorm vibe I was going for. I also tried out a canvas fabric backing in the frame, just to see how it would look, but nixed that too. Something about the clean, empty frame just appeals to me.

So that’s that. The frame had a hanging wire attached already, although I did have to do a little surgery to move it from horizontal hanging to vertical hanging, but no sweat. It took a total of maybe 15 minutes to go from before to after. Love it. Here’s a view of the whole hallway, so you can see how it all relates:

Now we just have to finish those baseboards, switch out some light fixtures and paint door trim. My work is never done.

So what do you think of my new frame? Anyone else using alternative message boards around the house? Or leaving random messages from family pets?

-Dawn

 

No Comment

What do you think? Leave a comment below.