DIY: Dry Erase Boards and the Ikea "As-Is" Aisle

Ikea is one of my favorite stores. It's the only place that I've found that can beat even Walmart on kitchen gadgets. I've always been impressed with their products (as long as you have a basic understanding that you aren't purchasing heirloom pieces). I love the way that they think outside the box and come up with ingenious designs.

Recently, we needed to pick up a shelf for the baby's room. We headed to Ikea and picked out the lack wall shelf in white for $14.99. When we headed toward the checkout, we made our usual stop to the "As-Is" aisle. The "As-Is" aisle is an elephant graveyard for ikea rejects. They have everything including damaged goods, discontinued items, show room or display models, and random parts of furniture. They have a tall shelf in the corner that has doors, table tops, and pieces of wood. They had several base pieces of chairs (the rolling parts). They even had a GIANT backyard gazebo tent that was discontinued for $75.00!

To be perfectly honest, I have always stopped at the "As-Is" aisle, but before I started bringing Jon, most of it was lost on me. I couldn't figure out what any of the pieces were or what to do with them. Last time, I brought Jon and he grabbed a really cool lighting fixture for $10.00. He knew exactly what he needed and where in the house we had a closed fixture outlet where it could be installed. The result was great and I'm thrilled he could do it for only $10.00!

This time, we found a pile of discontinued white corner shelves for $5.00, that worked even better for where we wanted to install the shelf so we grabbed two of them so we could stack them. We put the lack wall shelf back.

Jon found two high gloss white boards that appeared to be parts of a larger piece in the cabinet of boards. He recognized that they could be used as dry erase boards because they were covered in the blue sticky protective film. There was a very large board for $3.99 and a smaller board for $1.99. We  took them home and set the large one up in the kitchen as a Menu Board, using command adhesive to adhere to the wall. The smaller one, we'll set up in the nursery.

For an example of the savings... This dry erase board is being sold at Staples for $45.99

Quartet® Contour® Melamine Dry-Erase Boards with Textured Plastic Frame, 3' x 2'

• Standard melamine surface
• Textured plastic frame with rounded-corners
• Dimensions: 3'W x 2'H

Price:

$45.99

The next time you're in Ikea, stop in to the "As-Is" aisle to see what can be used! You can also check out the Ikea Hackers site for inspiration by clicking here.