Fan Blade Message Center

For a while I've wanted to have a message center for by the front door. You know... one of those cork board/dry erase/chalk board things. I had some cork and was just going to wrap them and buy a square dry erase to go with it. But then this happened...

Our ceiling fan broke.
(See the light fixture dangling in the middle?)
So it got taken down and I saved the blades. It only took me a few seconds to decide that I wanted to make a message center out of them.

This is what I was doing at midnight on New Year's Eve. Exciting.

This was pretty much all I needed.
Blades, material, cork, and chalkboard paint.

I traced out the shape of the fan blades on the cork and cut them out.

And glue them on.

I had to put two layers of cork so it would be
thick enough for the thumbtacks to stick.

Then I wrapped the cork/blade with the materials
and used spray adhesive and hot glue to attach it.

The three wrapped blades.

Then I sprayed the other two blades with chalkboard paint.

It didn't cover the sides, but that was
ok, because they're hidden.

Then I laid out all five, alternating cork and chalkboard. I attached them with hanging brackets, but they weren't very sturdy, so I attached some dowel rods to make it more sturdy. Yes, the back side is very unattractive.

Then I needed to do something with the non-covered up holes from the old hardware. So I added S-hooks for keys.

Then I sewed little pockets from the leftover scraps
and tied them into the other two holes with some cute ribbon.
One is for the chalk.

And other one is for paper or tacks or whatever.

The finished product. I'm proud of it.

And in case you were wondering...

I bought this fan in 2003 when I moved into my own place after college. There was no fan in my upstairs bedroom, and it was HOT. I never got it installed, though. So it has now lived in 2 closets, 1 storage facility, 1 garage, and 1 backyard shed. You can tell by looking at the box that it's been moved a few times. I was very excited to finally get it put in.

I like it!

Posted in: , on Sunday, January 16, 2011 at at 12:03 AM  

5 comments:

  1. Savvy On January 16, 2011 7:53 PM Wrote

    VERY cool Ash!

  2. Anonymous On January 16, 2011 8:29 PM Wrote

    That is too cool for words. You are certainly creative!

  3. Amber On January 16, 2011 9:14 PM Wrote

    Very creative! Love the new look of the fan blades!

  4. The Cornelisons On January 19, 2011 3:12 PM Wrote

    That is very cool. I would have never looked at my broken fan and thought it was anything but trash. We've tossed about 4 of them from our current house! Who knew?!?

  5. Merit On February 10, 2011 10:49 PM Wrote

    Looks Great!

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