I've been pricing whiteboards and realize the surface is usually melamine. I'm wondering if I can just paint a section of my existing wall with melamine? I'm setting up a tutoring center in my home office.

I use a whiteboard quite a bit as a college professor and if your wall has any texture at all it will be very frustrating to write on with a dry erase marker. It would also be more difficult to erase and clean.

Go with a commercial whiteboard instead.

Steve
steve@paintermatch.com
http://www.paintermatch.com

Last year, my football coach husband bought a big "thin sheet" (5x8?)of melamine for about $9 at a DIY/hardware store (are we allowed to say Home Depot?), then screwed it to the wall in his office. If I remember correctly, we used quarter-round trim to finish the top and sides, and a grooved, wider molding at the bottom to hold dry eraser markers and erasers. It's been written on daily by literally dozens of people, and it's still in great shape.

Melamine also comes as a "board," that is backed with thicker, heavier wood. It's more expensive and harder to handle.

The sheet melamine worked so well, all of our coaches now have them!