DIY: Family Command Center

Howdy ya'll.

As we mentioned a few months ago, we've been trying to go through our house, room-by-room, and remodel/organize each room on a tight budget. We gave ourselves $100 for the whole house! (We did add the caveat that any money received for items we sold could be added into this fund.) Now clearly, this meant we aren't going to be tearing out cabinets or buying new appliances/furniture. But we wanted to challenge ourselves to improve each room in aesthetics and livability.

We started with a kitchen clean out, selling or donating unused items and taking some time to really organize our cabinet and pantry spaces (something we didn't do during a rushed move-in). In the following months, we organized our "Junk closet", found a way to organize the tons of blankets we have scattered around our house, and sold our old treadmill. However, none of those made a big difference in the aforementioned criteria.

So this month we wanted to take on one of our bigger projects. Since we've lived in our house, we've had a little dry erase board hung on the wall of our kitchen as a "Command Center'' of sorts; a place to write out to-do lists, reminders, etc... For years though, we've wanted upgrade and make something more substantial and practical, yet decorative. We knew we wanted a place to write messages as well as pin important documents up where they wouldn't be lost and forgotten. The new center also needed to function as a mail center and place for important items (bags, keys, etc.) 

So last month I began drawing up some designs and looking for cheap dry-erase boards. We were originally planning on an "over-under" design for the dry-erase and pin boards, with mail slots, shelves, hooks, etc. set on the side of the center. However, when I found someone selling a dry-erase and cork board pair (each 3'x2') for only $6, I had to rethink the design since it would end up too tall for Maddie to easily utilize. So we settled on a horizontal design with a French cleat rail below the boards that would allow for a completely customizable function. With the rail, all the mail slots, shelves, bins, and hooks would be able to be moved around, added, or removed to best fit our needs. If we think of a attachment we need later, we can simply add it onto the center. 

The best part of the whole project was that I had everything I needed (aside from the dry-erase and cork boards) to finish the build of the Command Center already stored in my workshop. Meaning our total cost for the project was $6! The design also makes it very easy to switch out either board should they ever be damaged and need replacing. You can check out the actual build in the video below.