Tuesday, January 31, 2012

DIY headboard

Last weekend I sold my white bed seen here.  Bye Bye Bed, I'll miss ya!  But to make up for it, I made a 567% profit. Woot Woot.  Anyway, I now had $100 in my pocket to make a headboard for our king size bed.  

The first step was to determine what headboard style I wanted, but my budget helped with this decision.  Elaborate headboards with tufting or nail head trim dramatically increase your costs. I stuck to a simple rectangular shape.  For this go-round, I'm glad I made it easy on myself.

To start, I picked up a 4x8 sheet of 5/8" plywood from Lowes (~$20). The nice men at Lowes cut it to 80" (King bed width). Unfortunately they can only cut off length and not height (no rip cuts), so when we got home Joe cut it down to the width of the foam.  Foam is expensive! This is what determined the size of our headboard because I was only willing to buy 80" of 2" thick foam from Joann Fabrics. It cost $30 per yard, but I got 2.44 yards with a 50% off coupon bringing it to about $20 for the foam. I really didn't want to buy another 80" piece to the make the headboard higher, so that's what we were going to work with. To make a straight cut, Joe clamped a spare piece of wood as a guide for his circular saw. The distance from the blade to the edge of the guide was 1.25" on our saw, so the wood was clamped at 25.25", and a clean cut was made at exactly 24".


Here is he lining up the guide plank.


Once Joe cut the board to the right dimension, I took over.  I used spray glue from Joann's to attach the foam to the plywood. I did this step outside (volatile chemicals).

Joann's had a 50% off sale on batting, so I acted fast! So I bought a full size piece pre-cut for about $7. I laid the plywood/foam on the batting like this and laid the foam-side-down on the batting.


I used a staple gun to staple the batting around the wood on all sides.


Then, I laid the fabric down on the carpet (after ironing it) and pulled it taut around on all sides. I used my staple gun to affix the fabric to the headboard. I really chickened out when I bought this fabric. I was having an "Oh No" moment at the fabric store when I couldn't decide on a fabric. There are so many options and since I was on a limited budget I couldn't decide. I had another fabric in my hand, but when I was waiting in line to have it cut I thought, "this fabric is going to need nail head trim or something to make it special" since it was plain gray microsuede fabric. I spotted a white diamond fabric in the quilting section right by the cutting counter so in my head I thought "ok this fabric has a slight pattern to it, it won't need anything else." WRONG. You'll see below the error in my "Just Choose Already" moment at Joann's.


Here it is all stapled on and ready to go.


To hang the headboard, we used a flush mount picture hanging metal bracket from Lowes. One piece is drilled to the headboard and the other attached to the wall. This mount was $10.


Joe used a framing square to mark the mounting holes on the headboard.





To attach the wall piece, we used no-drill drywall anchors (studs weren't in the right place), and screwed the piece on. The flush-mount kit includes a mini-level that attaches to the wall piece, which was useful for aligning the drywall anchors.

The two of us lifted it up on the mount and here it is! Not thrilling, is it? I was sort of bummed about the way it looked. Very plain jane and looked as if it were floating on the wall.


So the search began for what to do with it.  I knew with the 2" foam that nail heads were out of the question and I still had some money left over from my budget for fabric so the search began for something more interesting.  Stay tuned! Tomorrow we'll have the complete and finished headboard for you.


xo
Cathleen

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