A Bed With A Head!

I don’t know about you, but I find that a bed without a headboard or lots of pretty pillow shams lined up across the back, looks unfinished.  Besides that, if you want to sit up in bed and read, for example, it is not so comfortable against the hard wall.

I know that when you are furnishing a house to make it your home, a headboard can be an expense that you would rather not outlay at the beginning.  We have a super solution for that….a do-it-yourself headboard that DOES NOT end up looking like “happy hands at home” when you are finished.

What you need is a large piece of board, fabric of your choice, a piece of fabric for lining and  10 yards of what is called “batting” to put between the wood and your lining.  You should buy the thickest batting you can find.  The tools you will need are a staple gun (we recommend an electric one), a hammer, 18 screws if your bed is Queen, (12 screws if your bed is Twin and 24 screws if your bed is King) and a pair of scissors.  You will need two people to do this project.

First, are going to measure the width of your bed and the height at which you want your headboard to come  (we recommend somewhere between 52″ and 58″).  Then measure the distance from the top of your headboard to the top of the box spring (let’s say for our purposes right now, that is 32″).

You are now ready to go to a lumber yard (there are lumber yards at Home Depot and Lowes).  You are going to pick out a large piece of 3/4″ thick board.  This should not be fabulous wood – it just needs to be thick enough that it will be “sturdy” and will not buckle.  You might pay about $30 for a large sheet.  You are going to then ask the person at the lumber yard to cut that piece of wood for you.  Now, one of your measurements will be the width of your bed and the other measurement will be from the top of the headboard to the top of the box spring.  The piece of wood that you have purchased is much bigger than the piece that you have asked them to cut for you so, out of the remaining piece, you are going to ask them to cut 3 pieces – if your bed is Queen, (2 pieces if your bed is Twin or 4 pieces if your bed is King) – of wood that are 4″ wide x 36″ long (these we will refer to as “legs”).

Once you have the pieces of wood at home, screw the long narrow ones, your legs,  to one side of the large board that you have had cut.  Now, to figure out where you are going to screw them you first take the  total height of your headboard.  Let’s say that is 54″.  Then, you subtract the height of the piece of wood you have just had cut – that is the measurement from the top of the headboard to the top of the box spring – let’s say that was 32″ so we would hypothetically need 22″ more to reach our desired height.  The length of the legs you had cut is 36″ but you only need 22″ more so you would screw the leg onto the headboard with 22″ hanging off on the bottom and 14″ being screwed to the board.  You will put two sets of three screws into each leg, one set fairly near the bottom of the headboard and another set a couple of inches down from the top of the leg.

So, at this point, your “on its way to being a headboard” should look something like this.

Now, you are going to cut your batting into lengths 8″ wider and 8″ longer than your board. So, with the measurements we have been using, you would cut your batting 70″ wide by 40″ high.  Out of 10 yards of batting, you should get 5 thicknesses.  Please be sure that the batting is as thick as you can get it.  It will seem thick as you are putting it on but it will not look as thick when you get the fabric tightly pulled on top of it.

You are then going to place the 5 pieces of batting on top of your headboard, with the legs facing up.  In other words, the batting is going to go over the whole of the headboard (32″ x 62″) on the side that the legs are screwed onto.   You are then going to place a piece of lining just a little bit larger, so maybe 74″ wide and 44″ high, on top of the batting.

Plug your staple gun in at this point as you are going to begin stapling.  Start at the top and, while holding the batting in place, stretch the lining over it, fold it on the back side and staple it in place.  Go along the top doing this, then one side and then the other side.  Be sure to pull the last side very tightly before you staple.  You are then going to do the corners. Be careful as you do the corners to get them neatly tucked in and then stapled.

Once you have the lining nicely stapled onto the headboard, do the same with your finish fabric.  Most fabric is 54″ or 60″ wide and so you are going to have to piece your fabric, unless you are doing a Twin headboard.  The way you want to do this is to use your width for the middle part.  So if you fabric is 54″ wide, you would use that width in the middle and then you would add 13″ to each side to give you the 70″ width you need.  Don’t forget to leave room for your seams.  Make sure the two seams on either side are the same distance from the side on both sides.

And there you have it – a wonderful, finished, abundant look – a look that adds warmth to your house, thus making it a home.