DIY Upcycled Corkboard

Well hello dere!

It's been a lovely few weeks here with the wonderful Miss E and we've finally had a day off together that didn't involve family parties (birthday, mother's day... all the days!), distracting boyfriends, or general exhaustion. We set out to do ALL THE THINGS. Well, we did some of the things... and ate a lot of food.

One of the things we tackled today was setting up our new "Command Center" in order to make sure we're both on the same page. You know, when you just don't catch the, "I won't be home for dinner tonight", as the other person whizzes past with a bagel in their mouth. Also known as "every morning".

Anyway, so here's how we started! I grabbed this currently defunct cork board from work. Now, someone obviously snagged it in the past from either a liquor store or a restaurant considering the fact it's a booze promotion. It's really just a red wooden frame with a cork board on one side and a cheap-o blackboard on the other, nothing super high end. Ask around non-chain restaurants/bars or liquor stores if they have any they're not using. I have to imagine they get more of these than they could ever even use...

Moving on... so we covered it! Because frankly, I prefer wine and no one in my family needs further reason to poke fun at my affinity for the drink or my inability to stop giggling after one or two. We used some leftover scrapbook paper rather than going out and buying poster backing. Since the dimensions on this particular cork board meant we needed at least three pieces of the same paper (we didn't have that), we opted to create a border around two pieces we liked. I simply just cut down the middle of the blue patterned paper (no need for a pretty edge, you're just going to hide it under the square bits in the center). The paper is stapled on so in the future, if we want to swap it out, no big deal. I toyed with the idea of modge podging it on or using the foam adhesive squares but eh, I wasn't that motivated. A few staples did nicely.

You could easily stop here and have a pretty nice corkboard. But we're overachievers and wanted to be able to catch our mail on this "command center". So I stole borrowed some bully clips from work to hang from the edge of our board. Originally, I planned to just use a few small nails and hang them that way. While I was searching the drawers for the plastic case, I began to realize my mother may have taken them with her when she took her tool kit to the new house. D'OH. But I found something  better! Small screw-in hooks! We so fancy.

First, I measured out how much space I was going to need between the hooks. We had enough room for eight of them. I made my marks and lightly tapped a thumbtack to make a starting hole for the hooks to thread on to. They weren't too hard to screw in, you can get about halfway with your fingers before succumbing to pliers.

But be careful you don't accidentally break the hook with your She-Hulk force...

Oops. This is when you cover the broken post with red marker, whistle innocently, and screw a second hook in right next to the broken one...

Here's the finished product! Easy peesy lemon squeezy, right?

Let the pinning begin!