Hanging a Large DIY Wipe Board

As mentioned here, one of my framed glass wipe boards just hangs from a picture wire. Which is fine because I only write on it once a week.

But the other one is written on daily. And is bigger and heavier. So I wanted something stronger and more stable.

French Cleat

Years of watching HGTV to the rescue! (Or was it on Trading Spaces?) …I remembered seeing a large headboard attached to a wall using a french cleat, which is made from a board cut in half lengthwise at a 45° angle. One half is attached to the wall and the other half to the hanging piece, such that the two halves lock into place. Here’s a video in case my picture there isn’t enough.

Note: there also needs to be a spacer at the bottom to keep it from swinging towards the wall and tilting the whole piece. So I started with a wider board and made two cuts: one straight (creating the spacer), one angled (creating the cleat pieces).

Another Option

If you don’t have a way to make an angled cut but have some eye screws, another option is to twist the eye screws into the back of the frame near the top. Then attach a board (e.g. a 1x2) to the wall, rest the eye screws on top of it, and drive a nail or screw through each eye screw hole into the top of the wall board. Again, you’d need a spacer at the bottom too. 

Bi-Level Hanging

In my case, I wanted to hang the board out of Lucy’s reach, but I also wanted Heidi to be able to comfortably write on it at times. Lucky for me, my cleat boards were too long. So I cut off the extra 5” and used the two pieces to form a second hanging level – you can see them in the photo below left. Photo below right shows it hanging at that lower level and you can also see the long high-up piece from which it usually hangs. (Yeah, that was  out of Lucy’s reach… before Lucy figured out how to push various pieces of furniture over there as stepstools!)

 

Note: I screwed the short little pieces—and the long piece too—into studs for added strength.

I also made sure, when placing the lower level, that it was high enough so it wasn’t in the way of the spacer at the bottom of the frame. See figure at right.

You could do the bi-level hanging with the eye screw option too; you’d just need to attach another 1x2 with nails/screws in the right spots.

Happy decorating!