Make:

I had an even cheaper dry erase board for a while: I bought a nice, large piece of lightly patterned, printed art paper and had it laminated at the corner copy shop. Stuck to the wall with thumbtacks, the laminated paper worked fairly well as a 'whiteboard'. The only problem I had was that if the marker were left on too long (weeks? months?) it would become much harder to remove. Not bad for about $6, though.

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We made one out of white melamine four year ago, but the dry marker does leave a trace if not cleaned in a day or two.

The cost for a sheet of 4x8 is about $10. We covered an entire wall from floor to ceiling.

There is a pic of it on March 22:
http://www.rainydaymagazine.com/RDM2006/RDMHomeMar2006.htm

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I've done a similar project in my kitchen. My friend had some acrylic left over from vending machines. One day it hit me that I could use it as a whiteboard.
I even put some large square graph paper between the acrylic and the wall, which gave me nice straignt lines to write on (or ignore).

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By the way, if you want to give acrylic a good cleaning, use xylene, often sold under the trade name Goof-Off.

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By the way, if you want to give acrylic a good cleaning, use xylene, often sold under the trade name Goof-Off. Alcohol does bad things to acrylic.

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Hm. Their solution was to buy a piece of clear acrylic and screw it up onto the wall. A better solution for most applications would be to use showerboard instead -- it's cheaper, easier to cut and drill, and opaque. It's also much less likely to retain a ghosted image than melamine or acrylic...

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000679.php

The last time we bought showerboard we got it at Dixieline, a local hardware store. I think the brand name was "BestTile" and it was maybe $12 for a full 4x8 sheet.

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Seems a lot of trouble, when you could just use a poster frame. Might cost a bit more, but it's got an acrylic sheet, a frame, a piece of masonite to back it up, and hanging hardware. You could either mount a large piece of white or graph paper as the "poster," or spray-paint the backside of the acrylic white before hanging it.

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we went with the showerboard from the HD store. 4'x8' sheets, wrapped the entire board room with it. 4 walls, and didn't need to purchase a projector screen, just erase that area of the wall and project what you want onto it... and 3m stickies cling to this stuff forever.

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I may be a bit behind the times on this one, but I put up a 4' x 16' board in my basement using tileboard. I have a write-up here.
http://www.cymek.com/?q=node/61

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I'm a teacher and have been trying to convert old classroom chalk boards to dry-erase. I've tried epoxy spray paint, Krylon, and many other types of paint. I found that the best thing to do is to use oil-based/HIGH GLOSS paint to resurface the board. Essentially, the HIGH-GLOSS paint has very little porosity and does not allow the surface to be penetrated by minor solvents such as Dry-Erase Markers. I would use the following steps for converting a chalkboard to a dry-erase board...

1. Prepare the surface with 400-Grade Sandpaper (you can use a lower number, but the surface will become increasingly coarse)

2. Thoroughly dust the surface WITHOUT water (water will make any imperfections swell up, and you will have to wait for the board to dry [about 24-hrs] and re-sand the area)

3. Apply a quality oil-based primer to the surface with a spray gun or a roller (allow full drying time as stated on paint can instructions).

4. Apply two coats of the HIGH-GLOSS paint with a spray gun or roller and make sure to follow the reapplication instructions.

5. Be patient. You need to give the paint about 2 weeks for the chemicals to bond well enough. It seems like a lot of work, but it's actually quite cheap compared to a real dry-erase board.

Please keep in mind that this is for a permanent fix.

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get cheap dry erase boards... much better then this $20.00 one... get a 2'x4' for $27 shipped @ ZoomaZoomaZoom.com

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You can buy a pack of two 20″ x 30″ foam boards with a half-inch grid at just about any office supply store for under $15. Kinko's will laminate them for under $10. Thanks for the other great ideas!

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