Magnet Memo Boards

I'm not sure this deserves its own post, but recently I made some magnet boards.  I thought you'd be interested.

I started with some Goodwill beauties:

$5 each.

 A little frightening, no?  In a faux-classical-1960's kind of way.  Their new purpose in life?

 ...to declutter the front of my fridge.

Take a moment to mourn what are probably pretty expensive, solid oak frames:

Then break out the white spray paint.

 You may, if you like, get irritated that you didn't think sanding and wood-filling would be an important step here.

 Instead, slap on some latex wall paint over the "primer" spray paint.

 It doesn't help much, but we can pretend it did.  Or we can pretend that the heavily textured, porous look is what we were going for in the first place.

Now buy yourself a piece of galvanized metal.  I got this one at the orange store for $6 in the plumbing section.  Pan sheeting, I think it was called.

At this point, you need to decide how you're going to cut your piece of metal.  I elected the trusty Dremel with the metal cutting attachment.

I also elected the trusty, stable, available ironing board as a proper work surface on which to cut metal.

 Directly beneath the smoke detector.

 Which is hard-wired to all the other smoke detectors in the house, so if one goes off, they all do.  But I was wearing eye protection, so I feel good about my decisions.

Next, you will want to take note of the glass size your frames use...

 ...because if you have decided to store the glass fronts on the floor, as I did, you may find yourself...

...in need of a piece of replacement glass.  This costs $7 at your local framing/dry cleaning shop.  Shop early...they close at 5.

If you have decided to paint your board, a nice, simple motif will look classic and clean.

  But you likely won't have time to execute this portion of the plan, as this wasn't supposed to be a time-consuming project and we've already invested over 24 hours in it.

**Incidentally, the whole reason you need that glass in the finished project is because you decided to paint the galvanized metal in the first place.  And if you read the spray paint directions (either before or after you painted the metal pieces, either way), you would know that spray paint is not intended for use on galvanized metal.  Therefore, without the glass, you will have a very scratched-up bit of framed metal within 24 hours of hanging.  So you have to use the glass.**

And if you do use the glass, don't allow the painted metal to touch it or it will do this black smudgy thing:

 Don't ask me how to keep them from touching.  I obviously wasn't successful at this myself.  If I were you, I'd just cover that spot with a card hanging from a magnet.

 And so there you have it!  From a cluttered fridge face to a somewhat less cluttered fridge face.

 The downside of these particular boards is that I had to keep the glass on them.  That severely weakened the magnetic pull of the metal, and so I can only use plain magnet buttons with no embellishments on them (I would have glued buttons on them if I could have, but they can't hold the weight).

The upside to this project is that we finally have a nice place to display the photo cards people send us!  So when I want to look up and see friends and family, there they are.  I like them, and I think having a quality thing that I invested not only money but heart into makes this project a win for me.  And not too terribly expensive.  Would've been less if I hadn't crushed that piece of glass.

Total price per board: $14 (including paint)