apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Wow, great reminder! I was in my studio getting pissed at the texture of my walls, and the mass of broken push pins. I'm going to grab some of this and rig my studio up right!

I have a refrigerator in an awkward place and it can't be removed. Covering parts of it with homesote, or another material like corkboard, would be great - but how would one attach the material to a refrigerators surface?

my texas house was built by o'neil ford in 1956 and the ceiling is comprised of homasote panels. the panels are about 3" thick and textured kind of like a dwr random light. on the outside (roof), they're covered with roofing paper and gravel fill. f

ord's thinking about the then-new material was that it was structural, acoustical and insulative (and he was correct). it's one of many neat features in a very cool mcm house by the original texas modernist.

as for my tiny apartment, it's very slowly on its way to neat and i'll post photos when it gets a little closer.

tinya
Attach magnets to the back of the material. It may take a number of pretty strong ones to hold it, but it should work.

tinya,

To affix something like this to your fridge, I'd consider gluing very large thin magnets to the back of the Homasote. (I've got magnets on my mind - just got some to cover my vents and posted it under "tips".) The company I've used with good results is Magically Magnetic:
http://www.lyt.com/
Just call them and tell them what you want to do - they'll tell you what will work.

Didn't see streepyj's post when I was composing mine!

The company I recommended suggests you can use large sheets of thin magnet sheeting - it doesn't have to be that strong at each point to add up to incredible strength overall. They showed how framed art could be hung on walls with the stuff, and never budge even with a lot of weight on it.

Tinya - I am a big fan of the 3M Command Strips that bond tightly but are easy to remove. I used them to hang a couple of framed pictures, a fabric pendant lamp, and a ceiling track for floor to ceiling curtains. I don't know what the surface of homasote is like, but if its smooth and not dusty or fiborous, (and if the homasote is not too heavy) I would imagine it might work. As for covering a refigerator, have you ever thought of using the Ikea kitchen trim panels? The trim panels are solid sheets of fiberboard finished in the style of the Ikea kitchen cabinets and are designed to go on the sides of the cabinets to give the kitchen a pro finish. They come in all of the Ikea kitchen styles and in several sizes. Depending on what parts of the refigerator you are trying to cover, it might be a solution.

you may also consider covering the panels in: 'velcro compatible fabric'.
also, remember that drop ceiling grid does not need to be used on the ceiling, it works just as well on a wall if installed with the painted flat edge toward the wall, this means that you can paint the thin edge of the grid any color you like, you just have to take extra care to cut and fit the panels that fit in the grid so the are snug or affixed so they dont easilly fall out as gravity and the intended edge of the grid is not doing the work of holding the panel.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Homasote's excellent sound-insulating properties... Recently used it to close off a friend's extra bedroom doorway (two 1/2" sheets on either side, separated by about four inches of air), and the new "wall" actually transmitted LESS sound than the plaster walls adjacent. Definitely a cool product, and a green one, to boot -- decades before green was trendy! -D

can also be treated with Nikwax.
formable when soaked in an aquacious fire retardant and allowed to set then surface treated with a thin layer of concrete.

ahh...homasote, it brings back the memories of dreadful crits....

...and because God is in the details, I'd recommend putting some sort of edging around homasote panels, as they can "fray" when subjected to wear. The panels at school had gypsum J-trims around them, which worked, but looked quite crappy.

Priming and painting, or even skim coating the sheets of homasote can help even out some of the roughness that these sheets have.
A few months ago I was asked to build to build a large, long bulletin board (the client was CLUI: the center for land use and interpretation: www.clui.org).
I used multiple sheets of homasote. I primed, skimmed coated, and painted them to create a more even texture. I also used cheap wood framing stripes along the edges which quickly gave it a much more pristine look.
and to TINYA's frig question... the magnets are a really good idea. If you prime the backside of the homasote, I think adhering the magnets to them will be much easier. I'm assuming you can use any glue meant for magnets.

stop the presses...?
http://www.tv-links.co.uk/link.do/1/44/98/1407/2617

oops, wrong link.
how its made molded pulp containers on the discovery channel.
i am such a fire resistant concrete pinata, no candy for me.

http://www.vidly.net/video-how-its-made-moulded-pulp-containers.html