A few weeks before Christmas I had mentioned that I was redecorating our guest room. Although I still need to accessorize the room, we did get the room painted and the upholstered headboard finished in time for it to be used for Christmas. Here is the room before we started painting.
For the walls I chose Network Gray from Sherwin Williams. Although a little dark for a basement room without a window, I really like the contrast with the white trim.
Since my children keep taking their beds with them when they leave the nest, we purchased a new queen size mattress set from “The Mart” the last time we were in Omaha. It seems we find an excuse to go to Nebraska Furniture Mart each time we are in Omaha. The original store is just a couple of blocks from my place of employment so it is soooooo convenient to stop by, much more convenient that the 45 minutes to an hour to get to the Kansas City store from our house.
I did not want to spend a lot of money for a bed or headboard that would probably only be used a couple of times per year so I decided to try and make an upholstered headboard. I started at Joanne’s Fabrics and bought two yards of white suede fabric that just happened to be 50% off that day. YEAH!! Dave went to Lowe’s and bought a sheet of 3/8” plywood and had it cut into a 32”x60” rectangle. I made a template out of newspaper to cut a curved section out of each side and traced it onto the plywood.
Dave used the jigsaw to cut around the tracings.
I then laid the microfiber fabric on our dining room table, layered on two layers of batting then put the plywood headboard on top. I used an electric staple gun to first attach the batting, then the fabric to the headboard. I never knew how much fun it is to use a staple gun!!
I probably should have started with a rectangular piece of wood instead of trying to get fancy with the end cutouts. I was having trouble getting the fabric not to pucker around the curves and ended up pulling out all the staples and redoing the curves a second time. They are still not perfect but it looks better than the first time around.
I had purchased some nail head trim and had planned on putting it around the edges of the headboard about 2” from the edge. As we started putting a few of the nails in we had issues getting them to go in straight. The bigger problem was that we were making marks on the white suede. I decided I did not want to go down that path now, but maybe later I will add the trim.
The final step was attaching legs to the headboard. In several of the examples I had seen, the headboard was attached directly to the wall, but Dave decided he wanted to make legs and attach them directly to the bed frame. Here is a picture of the painted room with the finished headboard.
The headboard cost about $28 to make which is significantly less than the $250-$300 it would have cost to purchase an upholstered headboard. I am still searching for the perfect wall décor but am pretty happy with the way the guestroom has turned out so far. Now I need to find a reason to use that electric stapler again.
And I might add that the bed rendered a very restful night of sleep!