After listening to me kvetch about how annoying it is to iron 44 inch wide fabric on a regular ironing board (because of the tapering end), my husband made me an ironing board top. It's so awesome and big, I love it!
How we made it:
- we bought a piece of wood from Lowes that was 72" long, and 20" wide (found it in the plank section). You could use plywood, but the cost was pretty much the same either way. We had someone at Lowes cut our piece down to 62".
- we also bought some small pieces of wood (1x4's would work, or some other small pieces of wood) to use as the holder blocks (see my 2nd picture to see what I mean)
- we laid the ironing board upside down on top of the wood, and marked out where the holder blocks would go. We then affixed the holder blocks to the big board with our drill and wood screws (tip: it's a good idea to use a countersink so that your screws aren't sticking out of the top of the board).
- next we put down some aluminum foil on top of the wood as the first layer, as we saw it suggested in some instructions for doing this kind of thing. It supposedly helps to keep the heat from getting down to the wood and warping it.
- then we put two layers of cotton batting, and some cotton fabric down, and affixed it with heavy duty staples.
And that was it, easy peasy. And now I have a luxuriously big ironing board :) Altogether, we spent around $50 for the materials -- I looked around and premade ironing board tops of this kind are over $100. I've very happy with it...it's amazing how small things like this can be the most exciting :)
ironing board
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from underneath
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