Building A Frame To Make A Hands-on Upholstered Headboard

We owe you a large post about all things Haven/ATL, but we are in fact driving home today (after crashing a bunch of excellent houses, doing a thrift store tour with Katie B, hosting an informal backyard wedding for Clara and Will, etc) so we will share what we snuck in before we left for Atlanta: the beginnings of a headboard for the freshly rearranged masted bedroom. With Ed the Bed officially minus posts, we swiftly turned our attention to making him plus headboard – as you saw Sherry mock up in Photoshop last week – along with darker floors and a darker dresser:

We hoped something upholstered over something wood/tin/woven/stenciled/painted since we hoped something cushy to lean back on (we have been doing a decent amount of reading in bed lately, and with the new arrangement the room feels cozier but not as “soft” as it could – especially since our first house’s bedroom had two curtained nooks on either side of the bed, so perhaps we are simply fabric-starved individuals).

For this headboard we chose to forgo our usual stretched canvas technique since we are working around Ed’s existing headboard. We devised a swift plan to use plywood and some 1 x 3″ boards to create a headboard that would wrap around what is left of the existing posts and essentially hide them from view. Simply pretend those Photoshopped blue blocks below are wood:

Clara was being quite the little helper at Home Depot (when she was not simultaneously mesmerized / terrified of the big saw they used to cut our piece of plywood down to size). We picked up a piece of 5/8″ plywood cut to 65″ x 36″, though I in fact had them slice it down the middle so the darn thing would fit in our little Altima’s trunk. It also made it easier for Clara to assist push us towards check out (where our total was $22 for the plywood plus two 1 x 3″ whitewood boards).

Here are all of my pieces laid out back at home so you can see how we planned to assembled it. The two brace pieces across the middle would make up for the fact that we had to cut our plywood in half. The two on the sides are what will wrap around to hide the posts.

I attached my side pieces using my Kreg Jig and for my brace pieces I simply drove a few spare screws right into them.

So here is the headboard all assembled. If it was not already obvious, this is the backside that will face the wall.

I had considered my work done and declared Ed’s headboad (Ed’s head? The Ed-board?) ready for upholstery. But Sherry, in all of her wisdom, suggested we bring it in the room to make sure it fit before covering it with batting and fabric. Smart cookie.

It did fit. At least, it did side to side – but we realized it was looking a bit taller than we hoped. In person it simply sort of felt too top-heavy if that makes sense, so we thought a bit of a lower rise would work better with the proportion of the bed.

So after a bit of debate (and in fact holding up paper while standing across the room to block off distinct lengths of the top) we chose to lop off about 5″ (poor guy, first his posts get chopped off – now this) using a circular saw so that I did not have to disassemble and cut the pieces separately on my table saw.

So here is the headboard back in place, looking much better. It is a modern bed with pleasant clean lines, so anything taller simply felt off in person (a little too traditional/ high-flying) and we want to leave room above it to hang something there to break things up and add more “layered bedroom ambiance” as the lady-wife calls it.

And in case that Photoshopped headboard-building-plan picture at the beginning of the post still confuses the heck out of you, perhaps this close up of the side will assist clear things up. That piece of 1 x 3″ simply curls around the side sufficient to hide the post – that way once it is upholstered it’ll be a seamless, even fatter looking headboard (rather than a headboard with a random white post behind it).

Sherry will cover the actual upholstery process tomorrow (we took way too many pics that we still have to upload so Sherry can write up those details) but I promised her I’d give you all a preview of the fabric that we picked out. We opted for a more free-form botanical print that picks up the turquoise in the rug, but does not compete with it by being another perfectly symmetrical geometric. It is a pleasant mix of light-and-airy-meets-mathy-and-shape-riddled. It looks a little crazy with them touching in the picture below, but in reality the headboard will be on a distinct plane than the rug (floor vs. wall) so they will not be all up in each other’s area.

Now that I am at the end of this post I am not so sure it qualifies as an “adventure” but do not tell Clara that. She thinks surviving the loud “scary scary saw” and getting to push the cart at Home Depot is about as exciting as it gets (although 8.5 hours in the car with her today might add up to something “exciting”). I think it would have been more of an adventure (slash nightmare) if we had upholstered it before checking how the initial height looked on the bed, so that would be my Pointer Numero Uno. Before shooting a few hundred staples into something, hold it up wherever it is going to go and see if the proportions look right (being sure to put all of the bed pillows in place if it is a headboard, since those can block a bunch of the headboard so they make a difference). What did you folks do this weekend? Any road tripping with a dog and a toddler? Or fellow headboard adventurers?