To alleviate middle-of-the-night overcrowding issues we recently upgraded to a King-sized bed. The bed is fantastic, but our old headboard and footboard no longer fit. We put it all off since furniture is always such a financial inconvenience, but Lindsay discovered a few blogs detailing projects that created great-looking headboards out of everything from shutters to old kitchen cabinet doors. It seemed pretty easy to do, and after landing ourselves some cheap second-hand closet doors with symettric paneling, we chose this project as inspiration and set off.
The Find
A set of plain old MDF closet doors for $25. This was the key, we had to find something cheap and second-hand or else the project would end up costing the same as just buying a headboard. Also, most doors have panels designed to look good in the vertical position, but this project would set the door on a sideways axis so we needed even panels.
The Shopping List
- 4x4 long enough to make 2 posts with the desired height. Wasn't sure, so I bought a 12' piece. 8' might have worked
- 1x6, 8' long for the top piece
- 2 1x2s, 1 for a mounting solution and the other to be a nail strip for the molding
- 8' crown molding, cheapest I could find
- 16' quarter round molding (I chose a concave look but I still call it quarter-round)
- Paint - spent the money here, as we needed special paint to stick to the laminate surfaces and this is what makes the project in the end, anyway
- A few wood screws already on hand
The total cost of the project: < $80
Making It
First I cut the 4x4 into two equal lengths to be the posts for the headboard. The length I cut them was basically the length of the legs on my old headboard + the width of the closet door + an extra few inches of rise for the crown molding. I also cut the ends off of the closet door since it was way wider than the bed.
Next, I fashioned some mounting pieces out of my 1x2. For each side I cut one length to match the width of the closet door and then added some extra pieces at the corners to make it a little easier to assemble. Trying to determine exactly where to mount these on the side posts was tricky. I needed the closet door to have enough clearance on the front to install the quarter-round and the extra room at the top for the crown molding.
While it would seem to make more sense to mount the closet door onto the frame from behind, I decided to flip it around and drive the screws in from the front. It was much easier to lay the closet door into place this way, the screws would easily be covered by the quarter-round molding, and I figured with the closet door being MDF, I'd rather have the screws go through the fake wood and bite into real wood rather than the other way around.
Next I installed the 1x6 across the top of the 4x4s, flush with the back of the headboard and overhanging the front and the sides enough to install the crown molding. I mounted my other 1x2 to the top of the closet door to fill the gap and provide a base for the bottom of my crown molding. The quarter-round covered this up nicely.
Before installing the crown-molding, I noticed that the MDF closet door was bowing in and out when we laid the headboard flat. I probably should have gotten another length of real wood to put at the bottom to square it all off and make sure it's rigid, but I wasn't making another trip so I improvised; I took one of of the pieces that I cut off the end of the closet door and mounted it to back, centered on the closet door and connected to the top piece just to help stabilize.
The crown molding is installed around just 3 sides so that the back of the headboard can be flush with the wall, so I started at the left side with a straight edge and then used my crown molding book to make my cuts around to the right side to finish on another straight edge. For the sake of this post I'll just say all my cuts were good and everything fit nicely and I didn't need any wood filler...
After sanding and filling in all the nail holes, Lindsay took over with the paint. We used Rust-oleum Countertop Coating paint, which is pretty expensive but it sticks to the laminate surfaces without scratching and the paint job makes the project so it makes sense for it to be the main expense.
Finally just a bit of distressing from Lindsay's designer touch and we have a finished headboard that looks a whole lot better than one we bought for our old bed.
Posted via email from The Williams Family
