How to renew that dry erase board

Have you had trouble with your dry erase board? Maybe it is not erasing like it should or your darling child or significant other accidentally write a note on it using a permanent marker?

Don't toss it out. You can still save even the most abused of boards as long as they don't have gouges in them.

Forget the store bought cleaners. I read the label on one of them and the primary ingredient is isopropyl alcohol. Rubbing alcohol. I bought a small spritzer bottle out of the travel cosmetics section of my local Wal-Mart for under a buck, poured a little rubbing alcohol into it and spray it on my dry erase board when it needs to be cleaned. It works beautifully.

And the permanent marker? You can remove it by going over the marker with a dry erase marker and wiping it away. If it's covering a lot of the area, or is stubborn, I remove it by spraying with my rubbing alcohol spritzer and rubbing gently with my finger then wiping away. It may take a few applications to get it all, but I have taken boards that I had covered in lines of black permanent marker to create grids for work and completely erased the lines in just a few minutes to make the board look like new.

Another tip that I have seen, but not tried myself, is to recondition a dry erase board by applying car wax, just like you would to your car, and then wiping it off. This is supposed to make the board work just like new again.