(Even more) board game wall art
One of my most popular DIYs to date has been the board game wall in our basement family room. It’s kind of wild how many people have pinned it and viewed it, you guys.
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| Hooray for popular pins! |
It’s undergone some changes since I first shared it with you back in 2014, and I’ve gotten reader questions about how some of the games are hanging up there, so let’s dive in!
The arrangement itself is pretty much the same — just larger — and it’s been such a fun addition to a window-less room that has many purposes: playing, watching TV and hosting guests on our hand-made daybed.
We received a couple of new games for Christmas which prompted me to switch things up a little. There were still quite a few games not on the wall and I decided to get them off the shelves into a place of honour. Of course, this is easier said than done for some of the oddly-shaped games.
Here’s a rundown on how I updated our cheerful gallery wall of board games that we can actually take down and play:
Standard board games:
The typical board-with-pieces games like Monopoly (er, Dogopoly), Careers and Cranium are the easiest to hang. I just build a simple wooden rectangle or square for the back and then screw through the board into the wood to secure it.
This way the game board stays flat against the wall (without folding up) and there’s room to hide a baggie of playing pieces in the empty space.
Certain games, like Scrabble and Othello, already have hard plastic boards so they don’t need wooden bases.
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3D board games:
For Christmas my sister bought me my old favourite game, Mall Madness. It talks and you get to swipe credit cards as you buy things, so the kids think it’s fantastic too.
The trouble was that the box was enormous and there were a ton of loose cardboard and plastic pieces that needed to be set up every time we played.
So I set up the ‘mall’ and then hot glued both levels of ‘stores’ to the board. The talking console can still slip out when it needs new batteries, but the glued cardboard surrounding it keeps it in place the rest of the time.
Board-less games:
Our pieces-only games, like Dominos, Animal Upon Animal and Jenga were still sitting on shelves in their original boxes.
So I added a small wooden shelf to the board game collage and stored their pieces in clear jars and bins instead.
At some point I’d like to upgrade to a set of large matching jars, but right now they’re in everything from rinsed-out pasta sauce jars to old cookie jars.
Trivia games:
I wasn’t willing to part with my Friends trivia game, but I decided I didn’t need to hang onto the huge board and the ‘Move back three spaces’ cards. So I put the trivia cards in a small wooden display — just large enough for the two stacks — and hot-glued the metal playing pieces on the front. They were too cute to toss!
Awkward/ugly games:
Twister had to remain in its original box because I couldn’t figure out how to store the huge vinyl mat in a way that didn’t look like a white tarp hanging from the wall. (Plus, I bought the vintage version and I really like the box.)
Yahtzee is also in its box for now, but I’ll probably find a way to display it differently at some point. The boxes are easy to hang — I just punch a hole in the back with a screwdriver and hang it off a screw.
Freestanding games:
Our Connect Four game was a plastic stand that needed to be assembled whenever it came out of the box. So I used a scrap of 2×4 and added L-brackets (I didn’t have any hooks) and two Mason jars to hold the pieces.
A bit of white and gold paint prettied it up and now it’s a perfect way to display and store the game. When we’re ready to play, we just lift the stand off the L-bracket hooks and the jars of game pieces twist off.
And when we’re finished playing, it’s easy for the kids to put back in its spot!
Just by tweaking the wall and adding a few more games I was able to trash two more garbage bags full of boxes and instructions. That’s a lot of junk out of the house — and more free space on the playroom shelves!
2 Comments on “(Even more) board game wall art”
So what do you think?
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Heather's Handmade Life 
WOW….so very cool! A lot of thought & work into this!
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Thanks! I'm really happy with how it looks — and functions!
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