• Coffee Table
  • Day 1
  • Day 2
  • Day 3
  • Day 4
  • Day 5
  • Day 6
  • Day 7
  • Day 8
  • Day 9
  • Day 10
  • Conclusion
• Whiteboard

Glass Mobile Whiteboard

I have had a small 80cm x 60cm wall mounted whiteboard for a very long time now and I have always used it to keep track of various tasks across various projects. At any given time there are lists in different colours and with notes in smaller writing next to those with boxes and lines thrown in and annotations crammed in every little corner. Quite some time ago I found that whenever I was embarking on something new or explaining a concept to someone it was always easiest if I could draw something out, the whiteboard was an ideal tool for that however it was always full of my notes. The solution was originally to take out my digital camera, take a photo of the notes, archive it and then either one of two things happened.

1. I wrote all the notes back up again when I was done (perhaps taking a photo of the new notes first)
2. I filed the image away somewhere never to be found again

There came a time when this was happening so often that I decided to buy a new whiteboard. I thought it'd be best if it were mobile so I could move to where it was needed the most and as an added bonus we'd end up with a second side. So I went on over to the website of a large office equipment supplier who shall remain unnamed, where I promptly found myself astonished at their extreme prices. Prices ranged from $240 for a whiteboard not much larger than the one I had on and eazel through to $448 for 1.2M x 0.9M mobile whiteboard and ending with a nice $690 for a 1.8M x 1.2M whiteboard and not only that but the local store had none in stock when I went to see them on display and wished to charge me $100 shipping to get one in 'on demand'.

This pricing scheme prompted me to look around on the internet for DIY projects where people had constructed their own whiteboards at home. Most seemed to use laminated panelling intended for bathroom walls and kitchen splashbacks to get a cheap surface that could be written on with whiteboard markers and erase reasonably well. After looking around further at the problems they were having with smudging over time or the wearing of the coating that allowed it to erase well it was looking like a solution though I would have to replace the boards every so often if I wanted to reuse them alot. One of the comments I came across simply stated that they used their office windows, they never smudged, they could always use window cleaner if necessary and it didn't stop them from reusing them as they didn't have a protective covering to worry about.

So I began writing on my windows, all over my windows. They became the most common place for me to draw out a fresh idea, crunch some numbers or convey a design concept. There were a few issues with this approach.. I got alot of odd looks from passers by.. a few disgusted looks from others who obviously throught I was vandelising the apartment, the background of the writing kept changing from the outside lighting conditions in adition to being a non-consistent colour and last but not least it was in a fixed position meaing that I found myself constantly leaving my chair to double check a piece of information.

I decided that I was going to build a whiteboard out of glass. The initial idea was that I would use extruded aluminium to frame either white glass, white lamninated glass or two pieces of clear glass with something white wedged between them and then mount that frame in another that was on caster wheels. I drew out the plans and headed off one saturday morning to a local glazier. Apart from a bad hangover the saleman was quite helpful, the whiteglass was expensive, lamination was expensive but clear glass was fine. We revised the designs some and came down to a design that consised of two pieces of 1.5M x 1M clear 3mm glass framed in standard 6mm framing mounted in shopfront window framing for the mobile frame. We settled on all the measurements and the quote came to just under $500 for it delivered, in powdercoated pieces ready to assemble.

It all arrived a week later, I had them bring all the pieces upstairs to my apartment where I sandwiched some paper between the glass and framed it, assembled the mobile stand and dropped the framed glass into that. I added some casters from a local hardware store and I was in business, I even threw in our company logo on each side of the inner frame for good measure.