DIY Headboard

I have a tendency to think about/write about/talk about all kinds of projects that I have "HUGE" plans for... and then never actually get around to them. Sometimes though, while it may take months or even years, I DO actually tackle projects that I've been dying to try out... and thankfully, often times they are successful!

Our latest undertaking was a DIY headboard, which is definitely on the "been talking about it for years" list. I randomly bought fabric for the project back at the beginning of our wedding planning because I was at a textile outlet and found something I liked for cheap... but of course with the wedding being my #1 priority for most of 2011, the fabric just sat unused for quite some time. When I ended up with a 4-day weekend for Martin Luther King's birthday I convinced Dan to head to Home Depot for the plywood, and our headboard extravaganza began...

I learned from reading a billion blogs that Home Depot will cut pieces of wood for you, which was obviously a huge help - and allowed us to actually fit this into the CR-V.

Here's Dan wheeling everything out to the car. The bottom piece is the actual headboard - the 2 smaller pieces are the remainder of the 4x8' sheet of plywood. Since we had to buy the entire sheet regardless, we figured we may as well take the extra pieces home to have for something else down the road.

To figure out what size we needed, we just measured the width of our queen size bed and added about 2 inches to be safe. For height, we made the bed complete with all of our pillows propped up and I grabbed a piece of chalk and drew a (very crooked) line on the wall behind our bed as a visual reference. Once we got to a height we liked we measured from the bottom of our mattress to the chalk line, and again added a couple inches just to be safe (I would have rather had the headboard end up a little taller than a little shorter). All in all the measurements ended up being 41" tall and 60" wide.

Originally, we were just going to do a regular old rectangular headboard... and then my mom told me she had a jigsaw we could borrow and I decided it would be fun to add a little shape to our headboard. So, we waited until this past weekend when we could stop by to grab it, and then decided on just rounding in the top corners for a simple - but a little more fancy - shape. 

Once our board was cut we arranged 1" thick foam across almost the whole thing. Since I wanted the headboard to go to the bottom of our mattress but did NOT want it to cause our mattress to sit far from the wall, we did not put any foam on the bottom 9 inches of the board, but still wrapped it in fabric for a seamless look.

We read that it isn't totally necessary to glue the foam to the board if you're using batting (which we were), but we decided to use a little spray mount anyways, which Dan had fun with. We also thought this was probably a good idea because we had to cut a couple of smaller pieces of foam to fit in on some of the edges, and wanted to be sure those stayed put for the long haul.

In case anyone is wondering - I did the un-environmentally friendly thing and bought regular old foam at Walmart for about $20, rather than the "green" foam from the fabric store that would have cost me closer to $75. Sorry Earth, I'm not planning to throw this thing out for awhile, and I don't have that kind of money for to spruce up my bed.

I forgot to take a picture of the next step, but it was the fairly easy process of wrapping a big piece of quilt batting over the whole thing and stapling it on the back around all the edges. Then we steamed our big piece of fabric and went to work wrapping that over the batting. I was super excited about how easy it was to get the batting right on the rounded in corners, which made it a little cruel when the fabric was a HUGE pain to get right in those same spots.

 

We realized pretty late in the game that we were using flat staples and probably should have been using the pointy ones (which we didn't have). This made Dan's job of doing the actual stapling a huge pain, but since he's not me, he made it work without any dramatic meltdowns.

We haven't actually attached our beautiful new headboard to the wall yet so it's a little crooked here, but Dan still helped me set it all up to take a quick phone picture so I could write about it in the meantime!

Isn't it fun?!?

I MAY be adding nailhead trim to the finished product before we hang it, but that will depend on if I actually find the trim at Michael's tonight. I thought I had already bought it at the same outlet I got the fabric at, but apparently what I actually bought was the little things you use to bedazzle a shirt a la 1990 and NOT nailhead trim. Awesome. If I do in fact add the trim, I'll be sure to get my good camera out and take a "real" final picture to post!

We took a few breaks throughout the whole process to switch out laundry, eat a snack, and lay around because I was having some weird stomach pains for most of the day, but overall our little project probably only took us a couple of hours total! And since I'm a cheapskate and bought my fabric at an outlet and helped destroy our planet with bargain foam, this entire project ran me a measly $50 or so. Not bad considering this similarly-shaped Crate & Barrel version will run you an insane $799! And with that... my little bedroom makeover is officially in progress. :)