Since we got married, my husband and I have lived in a cute little farm house. It's a perfect first house (if you know what I mean). As with all houses it has several positives and several negatives. What it does have is tons of space, great hardwood throughout (original to the house), and a nice dining room/living room open floor plan. It also has a much bigger kitchen than what I had in my old apartment (Praise the Lord!). So I'll bet you are wondering what on earth could be bad about this house. Two words: wood paneling. There are only 2 1/2 non-painted wood paneled rooms, but those rooms are the bedrooms and half of the kitchen. This wood paneling isn't the good kind either. It is not a pretty white bead board or even a rustic looking wood wall. These look like the 1970's threw up on them. I'm talking That 70's Show wood walls. You can only imagine what a decorating nightmare that these walls have been, especially since our furniture is...well... wooden.
It was a big problem in our bedroom especially since my grandparents gave us their beautiful bedroom furniture when they got new stuff. One thing we were missing was a headboard. Instead of buying a wooden one to match, I decided that maybe an upholstered headboard may draw some attention away from the woodenness of the room. I saw a ton of headboards I loved, but they were all too expensive. My favorite was this one from Pottery Barn.
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| Unfortunately, this Pottery Barn headboard totals to $774 + tax. |
So, I did the only thing my budget would allow me to do. I (with my husband's help) made one. Here's how we made a super cheap headboard that looks almost professional.
First, measure! My sweet man did this part for me. He is a bit of a perfectionist. Our headboard ended up being about 3 feet taller than where the mattress hits the wall (also it needed to go down about half the size of the mattress, just in case and about 1/2 inch longer on each side than the bed.
We then went to Lowes to get a piece of plywood, staple gun, and staples. They will cut the board to length for you (for free). Then, we went to the only fabric store/craft store within a one hour radius, Wal-Mart. We looked at thick foam in the craft section but it would have cost around $75...TOO EXPENSIVE. We opted for foam bed toppers. Those cost us about $20 for two. They should have them out right now and maybe discounted for all of those college-bound students. We also got adhesive spray, thread, high loft batting, and buttons. This cost us about $40 total (including the foam toppers). Earlier that day, I took a visit to the thrift store Dirt Cheap where I found a really pretty sheet for $2. That's it!
At this point, the total for the headboard comes to about $75.00. Pretty good, huh?
There are a ton of different instructional videos and posts about how to make your own headboard but none of them seemed as easy and efficient as possible.
Step 1: Glue foam to pre-cut board using spray glue.
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| Please excuse our messy guest room. It is where our boxes of things come to die. |
Step 2: Cut foam to fit board. (I found that a rotary cutter works nicely.)
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| Good Enough. It doesn't have to be perfect. |
Step 3: Cover the whole thing with batting, and staple. (Sorry, no picture.)
Step 4: Cover the batting covered headboard with the fabric of your choice (in my case, my
Dirt Cheap sheet), and staple the fabric on the top and both sides. LEAVE THE BOTTOM UNSTAPLED. Sorry, no picture again. It was pretty difficult to run the staple gun and the camera. **Make sure you fold the corners the way you like them.**
Step 5: If you want to create tufts, staple those. It took both of us to do it, but it was well worth it. I held the fabric tight, and my husband stapled the fabric, foam, and all to the wood. Work row by row. Start with that will be your center tuft and work to the outside tufts. This will make sure you don't have too much fabric between the tufts and look funny.
Step Six: Staple bottom of fabric to the back of the board. Pull as tight as you can!
Step Seven: To make the headboard look finished, you'll need to somehow put the buttons on. Since I didn't have a long enough needle, I glued the buttons on. I used tacky glue and put all over the backs of the buttons. Pushed them as into the staple as I could, and held the buttons in place with 4 tacks surrounding the buttons until they dried.
I let the glue dry overnight, and the next morning we had a headboard!
We secured it to wall by mounting the top with three picture hanging hooks, and used three screws where the headboard is below the mattress. It hasn't fallen on us yet. I'd say the two headboards are comparable, but you can't beat my total price of about $75 (especially when compared to over $700 for a similar headboard!).
That's all for today, y'all!
Remember: pretty is as pretty does!
-McKenzie
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