We owe you a proper post about our time at Haven/ATL, but we’re actually driving home today after a whirlwind few days — visiting a bunch of beautiful houses, doing a thrift-store tour with Katie B, and even hosting an impromptu backyard wedding for Clara and Will. Before we left for Atlanta we managed to get the headboard started for our newly rearranged master bedroom, so here’s that progress.
We wanted an upholstered headboard mounted over a structural backing — something soft to lean against for bedtime reading, but with a sturdy wooden frame underneath. Our first house had little curtained nooks on either side of the bed, so we’ve definitely been craving more fabric and warmth in this room. Instead of our usual stretched-canvas method, we needed a design that would wrap around the remaining bed posts and hide them.
Our plan used a sheet of plywood and several 1×3 boards to build a headboard that would encase the leftover posts, making a seamless surface for upholstery. Think of the Photoshopped blue blocks we showed earlier as the wooden pieces in this plan.
Clara was a surprisingly enthusiastic helper at Home Depot — alternately fascinated and intimidated by the big saw they used to cut our plywood. We bought a 5/8″ sheet cut to roughly 65″ x 36″, and had them slice it in half so it would fit in our trunk. Cutting it made transport easier and saved us from wrestling a giant sheet into the car. Our total for the plywood and two 1×3 whitewood boards was about $22.
Back home we laid out all the pieces to confirm the assembly plan. Two brace pieces across the middle would rejoin the two halves of plywood, and two side pieces would curl around to hide the posts. Laying the parts out first helped visualize how it would sit behind the bed.
I attached the side pieces using a Kreg Jig for strong pocket-hole joints, and fastened the central braces with a few spare screws. That made the entire frame sturdy and ready for trial fitting.
Here’s the assembled headboard frame — this photo shows the back that will face the wall. At this stage it looked solid and ready for batting and fabric, but Sherry sensibly suggested we bring it into the room first to check proportions before covering it.
Side-to-side the fit was fine, but the height felt a bit too tall and top-heavy for the sleeker, modern lines of the bed. We stood across the room holding paper at different heights to decide where the top should sit, and settled on shortening it by about 5 inches. Rather than disassembling the whole thing, I cut it down with a circular saw.
With the new height in place the headboard looks much more balanced. The bed’s clean, modern profile needed a lower, simpler headboard so the overall composition feels right. We also want to leave some empty wall space above it for artwork or layering later.
To clarify how the side wraps around the post, here’s a close-up. That 1×3 bends around just enough to conceal the post so, once upholstered, the whole headboard will read as a unified, fuller piece rather than having a visible white post behind it.
Sherry will document the upholstery steps in detail tomorrow — we took way too many pictures to upload and want to give a proper walkthrough. For now, here’s the fabric we chose: a loose botanical print that picks up the turquoise from the rug without clashing with it. The pattern is organic and slightly irregular, which contrasts with the rug’s more geometric feel. In the photo the fabrics look loud next to each other, but in the room the headboard will sit on a different plane than the rug, so the pairing will be more harmonious than it appears here.
As a final note: check fit and proportion before you upholster. Measure and hold the unfinished headboard in place with pillows arranged exactly as they’ll be on the bed — pillows can hide a lot of the headboard, and they affect the visual balance more than you might expect. If you’re making a DIY headboard, don’t staple fabric until you’re sure the size feels right in the room.
So that’s where we’re at: a wrapped, trimmed, and nearly ready-to-upholster headboard that tucks around the existing posts for a clean look. Clara thought the whole process — especially getting to push the cart at Home Depot and facing the “scary saw” — was a real adventure. What did you do this weekend? Any road trips with a toddler (and maybe a dog)? Any other headboard projects to share?