DIY Upholstered Headboard

To be perfectly honest I spend way too much time on Pinterest. I can get lost on that website for hours and hours. I make well intentioned plans to make all kinds of crafts, food, and life changes when I look through Pinterest. But somehow I rarely used any of the ideas I “pin”. I’m going to try and change that.

However this post is not about making something I actually found on Pinterest, more like Pinterest inspired me to create something of my own. Our guest room has been the place where anything we don’t know what to do with goes. It’s a combination of mismatched stuff and it drove me nuts. So I decided I was going to accomplish something I’ve always want to create, an upholstered headboard. I figured a statement headboard would be a great way to give the room a focus.

I read lots of blog posts of people who had made an upholstered headboard and some of them were a little intimidating. They talked about saws, and sewing machines, and lots of other stuff I didn’t have. I knew I wanted something with a shape, opposed to the straight rectangle a piece of plywood would give me. So Andy and I went to a couple Habitat for Humanity restores and were able to find an old wood headboard with a cool shape. (This was a really fast and cheap way to find a base, plus all the money goes to charity!) We stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up two huge bags of batting (way cheaper than at the fabric store) and then the fabric store to pick up fabric, duh.
And the process began! The headboard we picked up had slats and we were worried people would feel them through the batting so we wrapped each rung with a little extra batting. (The quickest way we could think to hand the batting was with shipping tape, don't laugh, it worked like a charm.) My mom later suggested that I could have placed a piece of foam over them but I didn’t think of that at the time so whatever. I then unfolded the bags of batting and refolded them to fit the headboard. I was able to triple up each piece which meant the board would be really plush! We already owned a staple gun from when we reupholstered the dining room chairs so we brought that out and went to work. We started by putting one staple at the top and then one at the bottom to keep everything centered. I held the batting taunt while Andy stapled. We found this to be way easier with two people working on it. The corners were a little tricky and I don’t have a super cool way of doing them other than leave them to the end and then fold them like you are wrapping a gift. We cut out some of the bottom layers so the staple gun could get through it but don’t cut the top layer! We repeated the process with the second 3 layers of batting and then the fabric. Make sure you line your fabric up straight if you choose something with a pattern. After that you are done! Our guest bed is a full and the headboard is for a queen mattress so Andy had to jerry-rig everything together but it turned out great and stable. Now I’m going to be obsessed with finding new linens, a bedspread, curtains, and wall decorations to pull it all together.