Command Center

Mother’s Day was approaching and my wife was hinting about our kitchen loft and how empty it looked. She decided to have me build a command center with a farmhouse style bench.

I started the command center by looking on the internet for ideas. I wanted to see what people were doing. Well, it turns out that nothing we saw was going to work for us. So I asked what she wanted in a command center, and that’s how we came up with this design. I’ve never seen anything remotely close to what we came up with.

I started with 1″ x 3″ boards and made a square frame. I chose not to go with mitered corners because I didn’t want it looking like a large picture.

This was another design where I didn’t follow anyone’s base plans. I came up with three panels and used pocket hole screws to attach them to the frame. The three panels were a chalk board, a metal magnet plate, and a shelving unit.

The shelves idea came from Home Goods. They had some slotted shelves that gave me the idea for the design. I got the metal plate and chalk board paint from Home Depot.

I used the smooth side of a hard board for the chalk board. I will not be using a brush again for the chalk board because the texture was not silky smooth like a traditional chalk board. In the future I will use the HVLP gun when I make another command center.

The stain recipe we were going for was a antique wooden look. It called for a white base of paint. When dried, we put on the dark walnut stain.

My wife loves it and it’s very handy to have for magnet pics, mail, and dinner calendars.

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