With or without kids, if you have a fridge it probably has a plethora of ugly magnets on it. Maybe some are worthwhile, but most have come from somewhere unimportant, in junk mail, from trade fairs or they were there when you moved in and you just use them because. I hate that look. I am sure most people do, but we don’t do anything about it. Until now.
If you aren’t too distracted by cuteness you may catch a glimpse of my fridge back in February … not its worst, but not pretty. Which got me thinking, when does someone take a picture of their fridge anyway?
On to the solution for the ugly, messy fridge you don’t take pictures of … yet.
I love Ana White and her at home carpentry blog, http://www.ana-white.com. I have been following her for nearly a year and have built a few of her projects and of course have a bookmark tab of a hundred I WANT to do. Back in January she made a few clip art rails to put in her daughter’s room.
Tutorial for Easy Clip Art Rails — Ana White
I thought about where my three year old (who is very stubborn) likes to hang her art, and it is the fridge of course. I would hate to make something and have her not want to use it — the chalkboard decals at the back of her closet are a perfect example because “Mom, you don’t draw on the walls, you draw on paper” … So I decided to modify the plan to have it hang on the fridge instead.
One evening after supper I travelled down to “Mr. Somewhat’s” scrap box under the work bench and found three perfect little boards to start. They were leftover from our bunny hutch project and were the right size – no modification required. I did a quick sand with my handy little B&D Mouse and got right down to painting them black to match the fridge. A little Gorilla Glue and some bamboo clothespins later, I had made the clip art rails from her blog.
Now to make them hang on the fridge … So far this project had cost me nothing, so I thought I would push it and see if I could make it totally free. I gathered up all the cheesy Realtor magnets and ripped the fronts off them, cut to size and Gorilla Glued them to the back of my rails. Success for one rail, but for some reason the second just slid right down the front of the fridge! So I did have to shell out for two rolls of magnetic tape. I found mine at Princess Auto. I put one strip the whole length of the bar on the top and two smaller scrap pieces on the sides underneath.
In the end I think they work great for displaying photos and art, but would also do the job for lists and business cards and whatever else it is that you hang on your fridge. And it is so much more organized! I love them! I especially love that in some light you can’t see the bars and it looks like the clothes pins are floating on the fridge! Which makes me think I want to try the magnetic tape on the back of single clothes pins too, maybe in bright colours for fun … But first these have the be “done” — while I love the look of bamboo I think it might be too subtle here and they may end up painted black in the near future …
And there will be better photos someday when my house is clean LOL. From one angle I had to avoid the Costco sized box of Five Alive juice boxes on the floor and from the other angle the dirty pots from dinner last night! And yes, you may notice I staged it with summer art, well it was almost -40C today with the windchill so I am pretending it is warm outside!
wandsomewhat.wordpress.com 
