At any given time, there will be a sea of cups sitting on the counter next to my sink.  I swear I just get them in the dishwasher, turn around and there are more already!   With summer coming, I know that is just going to get worse.  In the past, I’ve resorted to buying stacks and stacks of paper cups, but that is so unfriendly to the environment!  Here is my new – greener – solution; a family coaster!

Supplies needed:

Tiles or coasters (one for each family member)

A board

Paint

Rubber feet

Heavy duty adhesive like Gorilla Glue or E6000

Stickers (optional)

I bought these tiles at Home Depot for $ .19 each.  There were more expensive ones, but there were also even cheaper ones.  You could also use coasters.  Once you have your tiles picked out, lay them out with a space between them and measure to determine how long your board needs to be.

You can buy a board from any home improvement store; just go with whatever is cheapest.  They should cut it for you if you need them to.  Or, look in the aisle of the lumber section – or sometimes up front near the entry – they will often have a metal cart full of board ends that they sell for cheap.

For me, I looked through my stash of boards in my garage and found this piece of trim that we ripped out in a remodel and decided to use the back of it; I liked how it had the ridges.

Sand your board down if you need to, then paint the whole thing front and back and let it dry.

If you don’t want it distressed, I would put two coats.  I like mine roughed up, so I did one heavy coat, then distressed it with a sanding block.

Now, I brushed the top and sides with stain, making sure to get it down in the ridges.

Using a rag, wipe it back off until you like the look of it.  I like to leave a little more stain down in any nicks or ridges.

This is just so you can see the difference; stained on the left, not yet stained on the right.

Let that stain dry well.  In the meantime, wash the tiles with some window cleaner and get them ready to adhere to the board.

I chose to embellish my tiles with numbers (1-5) so I just used a vinyl sticker on the corner.  You could do initials, too.  I think cork coasters with stamped numbers or letters would be super cute.

Once the stain is dry, you can spray the whole board with a craft fixative if you want, just to make it a little water resistant.

Now you will adhere the tiles to the board.  I didn’t get  a photo of this step, but I know you can figure it out 😉   Since I have an odd number of tiles, I put a little mark at the center of my board and started by gluing down the middle tile centered right on the mark, then eyeballed the others out from that.

I used Gorilla Glue, but it takes some getting used to since it foams up as it dries.  If you use too much, it will foam out from under the tiles (ummm…not that I know that from experience…).  If you are nervous about that, I would recommend E6000.  Either of them should be heavy duty enough for this project.

Let those dry overnight.

Now, put rubber feet on the bottom.  There are dozens of options available at home improvement stores, craft stores or even Walmart, so look for what works for you.  These are little clear rubber sticky dots that they sell to put inside your cabinet door to cushion the slam.

Now you have a family coaster to keep right by your sink.  The rule in our house is that everyone gets one glass per day and it must be on your assigned tile.  Works great!