[briandon]

I need to have a whiteboard attached to the wall in my home office. I had one put up in my old workspace back in the USA and no screws were visible above the top of the whiteboard. The anchors and fasteners were concealed behind the whiteboard itself.

Finding a whiteboard hasn't been difficult. Unfortunately, though, all of the office supply shops I've visited, while they'd be happy to sell me a whiteboard and come around and fasten it to my wall, are telling me that the screws have to go above the top of the whiteboard and will be visible (the whiteboards they have for sale all have two rings that are affixed to the tops of the boards' frames and through which the screw heads would presumably go). When I ask them if they have any ideas for how to put one up without the screws sticking out of the wall in plain sight, I'm met with blank stares.

Does anyone know of a place where I can buy a whiteboard and have it installed by someone who knows how to keep the fasteners out of view?

Perhaps it's the whiteboards themselves - the ones similar to what I had in the US must have some sort of slots in the tops of their frames so that they can slide over screw or nut heads and keep them out of view.

Thanks!

[jimbo]

Briandon, I think I saw them in Ikea, you mean with the hangers at the back of frame like on wall mounted picture frames?

[briandon]

I'm not sure if the IKEA ones are in the right size range. I need one on the order of 4'x6' or 4'8' (metal frame, with the metal gutter at the bottom to hold markers and erasers), like you'd see in an office or classroom.

I hadn't considered IKEA since I hadn't seen any whiteboards there before.

[Muse]

I saw a whole bunch of whiteboards of different sizes and shapes in that stationary store beside CitySuper in TimesSquare. I didn't notice the details about the screws and things but there was a pretty good selection of different ones.

[briandon]

Thanks Muse and jimbo. In the end, I just decided that I didn't care enough to keep searching and got a used, but completely mint 4' x 6' whiteboard with visible hooks from a used office furniture place in Lai Chi Kok (they also have a place in Tin Hau with the other used office furniture places).

They delivered everything and put the whiteboard up (using long nails and a hammer to drive them into the wall). Everything turned out reasonably well (luckily, I had a level for them to use or else they'd have put it up off-kilter).

I've only been in HK snce Feb 2004, but I've found that everything we do in terms of shopping / home furnishing / improvement has two possible endings:

(1.) My wife and I persevere and, after weeks or months of legwork with gaps where we get exasperated and set things aside for a while, we get X (whatever we're trying to do/find/buy) done to a decent standard.

(2.) We get exasperated but give up for one reason or another - not wanting to devote any more time or attention to the matter or, in this case, needing X enough that we relax our standards of service/workmanship/whatever just to get it done so that we can move forward.

HK can be pretty exhausting.

I will check out the stationary shops associated with CitySuper (I didn't think to look there at the one in CWB or the one in Harbour City in TST, but will now) for large wb's just so that I can satisfy myself that they didn't have what I needed or so that I can kick myself for not thinking to check them out.