diy art gallery

When you have a stainless steel fridge that doesn't hold magnets you lose prime real estate for hanging kids art work. And my kids are creators so we needed something. Here's the solution we came up with - a cork wall!

After the walls and trim got painted in our play/guest room I put up 12x12 cork board. I had some from another project so we gave that a test drive. It wasn't really thick enough for the push pins to go in without starting to dig in to the wall. The adhesives that came with it were also pretty weak. I ended up going with these Quartet brand boards that came in 8 packs for a pretty good price on Amazon. They were a little thicker than my first try, but still can hit the wall with a pin so I may just need to try shorter pins. The only downside is that it didn't come with a ton of adhesive, so I cut them in half, so far without any problems staying on the wall.

Besides breaking up all the walls we have in the house, it adds some fun texture to the playroom and the kids love hanging up their own stuff. Extra note .... The chalkboard on the wall is from Hobby Lobby. We had them in our other house and I'd painted the frames a grayish blue color which ended up getting lost in our walls here. A quick trip to the sander in the garage and a little walnut stain gave them a fresh new look! I do not recommend chalk markers on it though, regular chalk erases much better, which is super important when your kids want to be the ones doing the art work for that as well ;)