Quick and Simple Dry Erase Marker Tray

Recently we hung a whiteboard in my wife's office. The whiteboard was nice, however there was no place near the whiteboard to put the markers and erasers. I decided to surprise her with a marker tray to put underneath the whiteboard. I had picked up some spare pine boards 1"x6"x4' which happened to be the exact width of the whiteboard.

I started off by squaring the edges of the board on my table saw. Next I took a 1/2 inch round nose bit and used my router to make  3 grooves for the markers.  The last step was to put a chamfer on the top edges to remove the hard edge. 

Before staining the wood I got out my orbital sander and gave the board a good sanding. Started with 150 grit and then moved up to 220 after that. I also took some sand paper and just ran it over the grooves by hand just to make sure nobody gets a splinter when trying to grab a marker.

We used the same Provincial stain that we used on the Spool Tree and only gave it one coat since the wood seemed plenty dark after the first coat.