The only problem with hardware store melamine is the performance degrades quickly and they ghost badly with almost any brand of marker that remains on the board for a week or so.

I’ve tried a bunch of hacks including wiping the board with WD40 and have since moved on to glass write boards when and where I can.

I’ve had times in my career where I didn’t have $200 to spend, and the hardware store option is great, but $200, in the end, is a small price to pay if you use the board for more than a year.

> The only problem with hardware store melamine is the performance degrades quickly and they ghost badly

I've had mine for almost 3 years and it's holding up just fine using EXPO markers (also listed in the post). I haven't counted an exact number of times I've used it, but it's a lot. Hundreds of times for sure. I just make sure to clean it semi-regularly which takes about 20 seconds once a month. Maybe yours wore out quickly because you didn't clean it?

Protip for hardware store melamine boards: get a Mr Clean Bar, and use it to erase things regularly. Mr Clean is basically a melamine sponge (no, really), so it works exceptionally well on the hardware store melamine.

I've had the same experience with melamine. I'm currently liking my 3M stick-on whiteboard surface. I think it's mainly made for resurfacing old whiteboards, but I just stuck a sheet on my wall and it has been great: https://www.post-it.com/3M/en_US/post-it/ideas/dryerase/

But it looks like they've discontinued the larger sheets? That's a shame.

For what it's worth, not all melamine boards appear to be the same in this regard. I covered a wall of my office in 4x8 sheets from Home Depot. It held up great. So a few months later I covered another wall, but bought the melamine from Lowes this time. The stuff from Lowes was borderline useless after a few weeks.

Dunno how useful this is as I have no idea how to identify the actual brand/manufacturer of the "good" ones...

$200?!?

The whiteboard that I've been using for the past six or seven years cost me $15 - $20 depending on whatever the exchange rate was back then. I could go measure it, but it's about 40 cm tall by 60 cm wide.

> $200?!?

Google around for 8 foot x 4 foot whiteboards (244cm x 122cm). The pre-made solutions are all in the ~$200 USD range.

I see. That is significantly larger than what I use personally, but at 12 times the area it does explain 10 times the cost.

My problem with those boards was that they would not erase at all. It didn't matter which solution I used, the only one that did anything was Goof-Off, which still took a bit of scrubbing for things that had been left on the board for a little while.