DIY Board and Batten Headboard

Hooray, I'm one small step closer to completing our guest bedroom, because we now have a headboard!

Well, we almost have a headboard, because I still need to mount it on the wall. But that requires my husband's help, since it's a little heavy. But just because it isn't mounted doesn't mean it isn't completed!

This is a project that would have been a bit easier if we'd had a truck or a good way of getting large pieces of wood home (although that's about to change soon!), but since not all of us have access to a large vehicle, I'll show you how I made this headboard with stuff that could fit in my little car.

Updated Bedroom Wall Art

Remember back in June, when I was gifted these canvas wraps from Target? And I said they weren't quite perfect as-is?

Well I finally got around to updating them!

See the baby blue colored circles? Yeah, those had to go, since there's nothing blue in our master bedroom color scheme.

So I bought some paint to attempt to cover up the blue.

Mixed together, the Citron and Spanish Olive colors were a close match to the color of our curtains (which I also owe you a post on, since I finally got them hung up this week).

And since I didn't want to risk it without testing, I first spot tested on the back of the canvas, where it wouldn't show in case my paint idea didn't work out.

After I let the test spot dry, it looked alright, so I took a deep breath and went ahead and applied the paint over the blue circles with the foam tip of a dry erase marker (pictured earlier). It was the perfect width for the circles and turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.

See, no more blue!

Except I'm still not 100% in love with them. I think it's the unevenness of the circles that's throwing me off, since the circle pattern on the curtains is so much more geometric, and the lighting project that I'm going to start working on soon will also feature perfectly round circles. But I am digging the colors with our bedspread and the headboard I made years ago.

I also want to find a way to tie in all my planned circle patterns in with the rectangles of the headboard. I'm thinking with a gallery wall on another wall, with a grid of small rectangular frames, with circle prints in them?

Although that would have to go on the wall above my husband's side of the room, which is and always will be a mess. I'm really hoping when we move next year, we'll have a walk in closet off the master bedroom for him to dump his never ending pile of clothes in (since of course, I'll still get a whole bedroom for my walk in closet, like I have now).

In case you're curious about the headboard and bed frame, here's a few more shots of it. I actually made this about seven years ago, when I knew nothing about furniture construction. We're still sleeping on my husband's full size mattress from college (although we do like to cuddle, someday I'd like to upgrade to a Tempur-Pedic queen), and once we moved to California, I was annoyed by the ugly box spring laying on the ground.

So instead of going out and buying rails, I cut some wood on our tiny back patio with a hack saw, stained it, and encased the box spring on three sides using L brackets on the inside. Yep, the bed is low, but it's actually really comfortable that way to us, after years and years of sleeping in it.

I also used the little hack saw to make the intersecting wood slats on the headboard. I absolutely love this headboard, because it's so comfy to lean on with the rectangles of fabric covered foam, but still shows off so much of the pretty stained wood. I would definitely make something like this again in the future, but with a few design tweaks like making it taller (although right now it is to scale with our low mattress), and making individual, removable fabric covered rectangles, so it would be easier to clean (or switch out the color of fabric if I wanted).

So there's a little look at the very early progress I've made in our master bedroom!

This is actually the one and only room of our house that I would leave painted the light cream color it is currently painted. I think the soft color gives a nice contrast to the dark wood furniture we have (which will all be replaced once we buy a house. See our bedside tables? One is actually a TV stand on wheels, and the other one my mom salvaged from next to a dumpster when I was moving out of the college dorms ten years ago. I'd say we are definitely in need of some upgrades, but are doing the best we can with what we've got for now!).

More to come on our master bedroom decor, once I catch up on my writing--I've been too busy actually working on the projects!

Have you ever updated or tweaked art to fit your color scheme? Or found ways to work with the less-than-perfect furniture you have, until you're ready to upgrade?

My Ghetto-Rigged Guest Room Headboard

Ghetto rig: To fix something in the cheapest, fastest, and laziest way.

I Ghetto rigged my stereo.

- Courtesy of UrbanDictionary.com

While rearranging the furniture in my in-progress home office/guest bedroom, I felt like the guest bed really needed a headboard, or something to anchor it to it's new wall I moved it to (and a 20 foot wall at that).

Here's a quick look at the furniture layout I'm going for, that I whipped up in Illustrator:

Since in reality, nobody is going to sleep in this guest bed (except maybe my BIL will need to crash once or twice after one too many beers), I wanted to spend zero dollars on this half of the room. So I moved two small shelves on to either side of the bed, to be used as makeshift bedside tables. But that left a big hole on the wall where a headboard should go.

(Go ahead and ignore all of the junk on the bed. Also, ignore that pink comforter, it was just a placeholder that the cats could get their hair on. And yes, the box spring is on the floor. I couldn't find the screws to the bed rails after our move, and so I gave up and am just going to leave it on the floor for now. It makes the room feel bigger anyway!)

However, I didn't just have an extra headboard laying around. Nor did I want to buy fabric and padding to cover a piece of wood to make a headboard. Not to mention the fact that I didn't have a big piece of wood on hand.

But you know what I did have on hand?

A big flat box that my big corner desktop came in. And some green valance curtains from our old kitchen that just happened to fit into my green, white and taupe color scheme from my office inspiration board.

Enter the most inexpensive, ghetto-rigged, placeholder-for-a-year-until-we-move-and-buy-real-furniture headboard. Basically just a box, two curtains and some tape.

 

Yeah, 'cause I'm cheap creative like that!

But it actually doesn't look that bad in person, just sandwiched between the wall and the mattresses. No, really, I swear! I was all about just trying it and scrapping the idea if it looked like crap, but it's not too bad, especially to the tune of $0, and the fact that nobody is ever actually going to sleep in this bed.

 

 

See? I knew all of those empty boxes from IKEA were piling up for a good reason! I wonder if there is anywhere else I can use the cardboard as temporary decoration in the next year....

Have you ever had to ghetto rig something in your home because you didn't want to actually spend money on it at the moment?