How to Make a Homasote Bulletin Board

Happy Tuesday to you. I realized I never showed you how to make a homasote bulletin board like the one we made for our foyer, a project we started last year – yikes.  It’s as simple as ever and of course super easy and cheap. What we all love, cheap decor.

This project started out as a way for me to hang things up on the wall and change them seasonally with minimal damage to the plaster walls we have in our house.  I had the idea to make a bulletin board so we could put whatever holes in it we wanted and have some fun with our decorations. Enter homasote. This is technically a compressed fiberboard product that is sometimes used for soundproofing and insulation. It many other building uses but us crafty types use it for bulletin boards because it takes pins really easily, you can cover it with whatever you want, hang it up, frame it, cause we are crafty like that.

We found ours in the plywood aisle in The Big Orange (you know the aisle – and the store), it’s about $12 for a 4 foot x 8 foot sheet.  So The Chef carried it out while I took pictures for the blog and off we went.

Once we had the sheet home we determined the size we wanted for the wall in the foyer. It was to be hung here on the left wall. {Sorry, only pic I have when we were testing paint}

We decided on a 3×4 size and cut the piece with a circular saw. Watch out when you do this because little pieces of the compressed paper will fly around. I’m getting better with the saw, straighter actually.

Then we got to work hanging the piece. We actually did this kind of backwards and ended up putting a wire on the wall and hooks in the back of the homasote. This is because we thought the hooks would hold better in the homasote rather than a screw for the wire which might come out. Make sense?

So The Chef went to work putting anchors and screws in the plaster. The way we do this is by putting painters tape on the wall so the plaster doesn’t crumble when you drill something into it.

Then he strung the wire around the screws and make it nice and tight. Those pink lines are chalk we use to make markings when we hang pieces. It wipes right off.

These are the hooks we got to secure into the back of the homasote. They are shaped so the weight of the object holds the hook in. We found them at True Value.

While hubs worked on the hanging part, I got to work putting on the fabric. I got a simple light tan colored piece that actually matches the wall color, so the art on the bulletin board stands out.

Look at my medically certified stapling technique. It’s like I’m performing CPR on the bulletin board.

Finally we had it hung up. In the fall I put on some leaf stencil art I made and at Christmas I made it into an Advent calendar.

Once the holidays were over I changed it into a winter scene with some snowflakes.

Since we had a large sheet of the homasote left over, I used some of it for the bulletin board in my craft area in the basement. This one is covered in burlap.

And there we have our homasote how to. Easy peasy. And we still have more. I might make another one for upstairs someplace.

Have you worked with homasote before? You might want to try it out!

P.S. I have not received any compensation for the mention of any product or retail outlet in this post. It is simply for information sake.