A Hands-on Busy Board With Latches For Kids

Glad New Year you all! Who is making resolutions? We are mulling ours over today (you know Sherry loves a list…). But let us get to the subject at hand. Being last minute “elves” for Santa. See, Clara’s play fridge was not the only homemade gift that she opened this year. Because the weekend before Christmas we chose to make her a little latch board of her quite own. And now we have at last gotten our act together to share the walkthrough with you. So oh snap (pun intended), here it is.

We first learned about latch boards when Clara’s cousin Elsa got one a year ago – she’s a year older – and we heard how much she enjoyed it (they in short tap into kids’ innate need to turn, twist and flip simply about anything that is shiny). So it is fairly much been a waiting game until we jumped aboard the S. S. Latch and hooked Clara up (we hoped to wait until we thought she could master it without getting frustrated and wanting to throw it through a window).

Now that she’s adept at other stacking/twisting games, we chose the time was right to Hands-on one so we hit up our go-to local place when it comes to handware and hinges. They are in short a warehouse full of hundreds of old skeleton keys, latches, knobs, and other random things. In other words: the adult version of a candy store for people like us.

We came home with quite an assortment of things and eagerly spread them out to see how everything might fit together. Well, eagerly as soon as Clara was napping.

Eventually we landed on this arrangement. We did not use everything we picked up (we returned some of it) since some of it began to feel redundant. Plus, we hoped to keep it at a manageable size. In short you are seeing some hinges, a bunch of window latches, some door bolts, and a couple of decorative carabiners attached to plain drawer pulls.

The wood piece shown above was simply a scrap piece of plywood that we were using to temporarily figure out our desired board size. The actual board itself needed to be thicker (to screw the latches into, so the screws would not come out the bottom and scratch the floor), so I found some spare 1×4″ and 1×3″ boards in the basement that I could jig together with my Kreg. Nothing like using whatcha got. We also liked that it would look sort of weathered and authentic that way, like the top of our console table, thanks to using the same method. But of course you could get a single board cut down to your desired size at Home Depot to avoid needing a jig at all for this project. I was simply using what I had.

I waited to cut them to the same length until everything was all jigged together so I’d be sure to get an even edge. Then I simply flicked on my table saw and made one swift cut down a line I made once we determined the desired size.

Here is the final 12″ x 12″ square piece of board that I whipped together. Oh yeah, and I sanded down the edges and corners to make them a bit rounder / safer for small hands.

To spice it up a bit, we chose to give it a little stain and paint treatment. Certainly not necessary, but kid-projects like these are our go-tos, so we like to have lively with them. I taped off the edges with painter’s tape and then used some leftover Dark Mahogany stain to give some color to the top (I also beat up the top a bit beforehand to make it look a little weathered).

Once my stain dried, I peeled off the tape and primed the edges quite carefully. Once the primer was dry, I repeated that step with a coat of paint simply to give the edge a little slice of color. We used Benjamin Moore’s Citron, which is one of the colors leftover from book projects last January (it is also the same color we used on the back of our giant chalkboard). I think Sherry and I both liked the combo of nearly-neon grellow + stained wood on that project so much that we subconsciously hoped to repeat it – this time so the grellow was in fact visible instead of hidden on the back.

You can see from this pic that after I edged with a brush I rolled over with a small foam roller simply to make sure my paint was evenly spread. It is fairly straightforward with a roller to not mess up your edge on a piece like this.

Once the paint was dry Sherry slapped on a swift coat of Acrylacq polyurethane to give it some brought in durability (it is low-VOC and non-toxic so we enjoy using it on the kid stuff that we make). After the topcoat of sealer had set overnight, it was at last time to attach the latches. Mind you, it was 40 hours before Christmas morning at this point. Oh, and do not mind the missing hinges. We chose to ditch two small ones and get one bigger one, which we hadn’t picked up yet (time crunch = my middle name).

Thank goodness Lowe’s was open the next day (Christmas Eve), which meant we were able to attach the last piece simply in time to get it wrapped for “Santa to deliver it” the next morning.

All-in-all, it cost us about $35. So, unfortunately, it was more than some of the store picked up versions. Most of the expense came from the two decorative carabiners (the red star and the pink amoeba looking thing were $9 total) and the locking window latch in the top left (it was $4). Had we ditched those or found less pricey versions we could’ve come closer to this version’s price tag. But the carabiners in fact seem to be Clara’s go-to part, so I am glad we “splurged” on them.

Update: As for if it is too heavy for Clara, if there have been any pinched fingers, or if we are teaching her how to bust locks, thankfully she has dragged it around for a week and does not seem to have any issues (it is about the same weight as her wooden Melissa & Doug puzzles) and there have not been any pinched fingers (we tried to picked things with smooth edges). The board is also full of external latches/hinges (nothing like the internal medicine cabinet locks or door locks that we use to keep Clara safe). We have in fact heard from a few teachers who have these in their classrooms and say kids enjoy them and they assist with fine motor skills :)

And if you want to see for yourself, here is a short clip of Clara opening her latch board on Christmas morning.

I think we got the reaction we hoped. What parent would not like an “Oh wow, man”?

Is anyone else out there making latch boards? Or simply tooling around in an old hardware store like a kid in a candy store?