I'm on my 1st year of medical school and was planning on purchasing a whiteboard where I can brainstorm into. But somehow, I've gotten hold of an old whiteboard.

As you can see, the board is battered. There are scratches everywhere, stickers, sticker marks, leftover masking tape, and even doodles left by permanent markers visible on almost every corner of the board.  I've decided on discarding the old board and just purchase a new one but somehow thought of trying to fix/recycle the board. So, here it goes...


The first thing I thought I should do was to remove the sticker and leftover tapes. My first try was by using a wet cloth to try and rub off the sticker, but unfortunately it didn't work. The sticker was there for too long that it's almost impossible to remove. The only thing that did the trick was by using a sharp knife. Tilt the knife into a 15 degree angle or less and scratch off the stickers and tape.

When doing this, you have to be careful not to scratch the board (I did a few). Also, I suggest using a plain edged knife to reduce the risk of scratching the board's surface. Here's the end result:

The second step is to wash off the dirt and other impurities from the board. I did this using a dishwashing liquid and a wet cloth.


The last step is to remove marks left by permanent markers. One thing you can do is use a whiteboard marker and draw over the permanent ones then wipe it off with a dry cloth. However, for this board due to numerous marks, I thought I'd use denatured alcohol. Just wet the cloth with alcohol and wipe off the marks left by permanent markers. Although, any alcohol based solutions would do the trick but in my opinion, denatured alcohol works best. Here's the end result:

I wasn't really expecting this kind of result. Although, I may have made a few damages due to experimenting with the methods I've used. The whiteboard is now usable compared to its old state. I just hope that I'd be able to find something to fix the scratches but somehow, I'm happy with result.