Quick Afternoon Project — Custom Designed Cork Board and Calendar for the Kitchen

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As part of my Renovation Redecoration, I’ve been putting up new artwork on the walls, and needed to replace the calendar in the kitchen. Not wanting to put up lots of extra holes in the wall for everything that someone would be pinning up in a kitchen, like phone numbers, a calendar, coupons etc. I decided to put up a cork board.

Originally, I’d looked around for framed cork boards, but they proved to be a bit pricey, even at Home Sense. I was walking around IKEA last week and came across a rather plain looking cork board that was a good price and a good size, too.

Here you have it—a quick project to customize a cork board:

Tools you’ll need:
-plainish cork board
-paint, anything from craft paint to acrylic or oil-based paint
-paint brush
-painter’s tape or masking tape

Finishing touches:
-push pins
-pre-bought or handmade calendar

This is what the wall looked like before:

Instructions:

For this project, I painted the frame silver using acrylic paint (the kind for painting on canvas) because I already had it. On a tabletop, put down some newspaper, and get a scrap piece of paper to use on the inside of the cork board (so you don’t get trim paint on it).

This is how it looked before. A bit plain for my taste. It was a good price, though—only $6 at IKEA. 

I used a bit of cling-film to put the paint on and used a paint brush to apply the silver paint to the frame. It may be hard to tell, but it is a metallic paint that perfectly matches our kitchen cupboard pulls/handles.

This looks pretty good, right? Well, we were pleased with the silver frame, but decided to go a step further because the rest of the wall art in the kitchen has black matting. The calendar is one that Greg created for January to April, using images he’d previously designed, and printed in a colour scheme that matches the rest of the kitchen (we have red accents).

Next, we taped a border on the inside of the frame using painter’s tape. The cork soaks up a lot of paint, so be prepared—make sure you have enough. I have seen expensive cork boards in stores, framed and with a message or design on the cork that looks like it has just been painted on. Be creative and feel free to choose a design that works well in your space!

If you’re wondering why the calendar is placed a bit low on the cork board, it’s because the top can be used to tickets to events, grocery lists or whatever else people need to be reminded about. The clear push-pins came with the cork board. Another addition might be to have a pen and some memo paper attached for making notes and writing in events on the calendar. We’ll have to look out for a red pen, perhaps.

Do you have a plain cork  board that you’d like to spruce up, or a calendar pinned directly to the wall?