Project time

The walls in our place are all plain and white and our bedroom especially is rather boring.  I accept that it is my fault for not hanging up any pictures on the walls or really decorating at all in our bedroom.  And my fault for being too cheap/lazy to buy bedroom furniture when I know we'll just have to move it.  But we finally changed that. 

As my desire to add something increased I began seeing different headboards that caught my eye.  If they could make something like that, so could we!  I had many great ideas.

I thought it would be cool to make a headboard out of an old door or shutters.   Adding a little crown molding really ties it all together. 

Inspiration found here, here, here, and here

I also really liked the idea of a tufted headboard.  They look so elegant and add lots of dimension and texture into the room.

Found here, here, here, and here

However, I wanted to enlist the help of Brett and because this was our first "project" together I knew I needed to keep it simple.  I also took inventory of our "tools":  a weak electric screwdriver that loses its charge after a few minutes, a staple gun,  and a hot glue gun.  It would just be impractical to try anything that would include fancy cuts or lots of attaching pieces, or sand/paint anything that would need space to dry.  So we decided on a simple padded fabric covered headboard.  Some day we might add some tufting to it, or even add a boarder using crown molding but not this time around. 

These are the supplies I determined we needed:

• plywood
• fabric
• batting
• foam
• staple gun
• spray adhesive

We ventured to Lowes where I found myself staring cluelessly at the piles of wood.  Brett helped me decipher the coded measurements and the nice guys at Lowes cut the wood to the size we needed.  We also picked up some spray adhesive and were on our way.

I felt a little more at home at the craft store but it still took some time to get the perfect amount of batting, foam and fabric.  Because we were just covering a large piece of wood, we needed a lot of each (it would have been less if we would have done legs on the headboard).  Luckily a nice lady behind us in line asked us if we had anything we could use her 40% off coupon for.  um, YES PLEASE!  We wanted the pattern to be simple (so our bedding would always match) but still quality fabric.  We got some black fake leather looking stuff. 

Once home we sat out our supplies and got to work.  It was SUPER easy and went surprisingly fast.  Looking back I bet we could have done the tufting, but we'll save that for another day.  The basic steps were:

1. Use the spray adhesive to join the foam to the plywood
2. Cover the foam with batting and staple into place
3. Cover the batting/foam with the fabric and staple into place. 

Brett did all the hard work while I held things and tried to snap a few pictures.

And here are some pictures I took (not nearly as nice as the professional blogger's ones above) of the finished product.  Its not perfect, but we love it.  It makes such a difference in our bedroom and was an affordable project to spruce up our bedroom.

Here is a picture of the before that I found on my camera from when we moved in almost 1 1/2 years ago.

And here is the after

We had our black bedding on and in the pictures the pillows blend/disappear.  It looks better in person but we also have a green/cream set that I'm sure will look sharp.

We still need something for the wall above the bed.  I'm thinking a few covered canvases?   Or some nice large black and white pictures?  Or maybe some letters? Or framed fabric? I have lots of ideas, in fact I even I have a whole pinboard dedicated projects and design for our future home.   I can't wait until I can actually paint walls!

But for now, we are proud of our finished headboard. I think I even convinced Brett we should do these little projects more often.  We'll have to invest in some big-boy tools eventually, but I'm excited for all the fun things we can make in the future!  (when we have a house, and a garage, and a backyard and money....)