DIY, Headboard, nail head trim, staple gun, canvas, Lowes, JoAnn's, Home decor, small room, crafts, plywood,
Let me start by saying I did this project in the beginning of January, before I fully well knew I wanted to start a blog, and therefore didn't document my process (apologies all around). SO I will do my best to try and describe how it went down. I knew I wanted to do a fabric headboard to add some texture and oomph to our bedroom. Unfortunately we are dealing with a small room, our house had most everything we wanted except for the master suite -Oh well, next house right? (fingers crossed)-, so I wanted to add interest without adding bulk (ie: large bed frame).
After scouring the blogging world I melded a few different processes together to fit what I felt would work best for me. I started with a piece of plywood from Lowes, just a basic cheap piece of plywood cut to 3' x 5' by the wonderful people of Lowes (we have a queen bed and because of the small room I didn't want it too domineering).
Now off to JoAnn's. I knew what kind of fabric I wanted, but not what it was called. Still don't really know what its called, but its FABULOUS. I think it's a canvas...anyways got a 4' x 6' swath of canvas fabric - you want at least 6 inches of extra fabric on all sides to be able to staple down. Other blogs had used quilt batting over foam core but I didn't want that much depth. I don't remember how large my quilt batting was but I did a double layer of batting.
Lets talk nail head trim. These babies are hard to find. I ended up finding them online at perfectfit.com a wholesale upholstery stop in Tukwila, WA. Unfortunately their business hours were just so that I would never be able to make it in personally so I sucked it up and paid for shipping...painful in my book. They didn't have the greatest selection (only two finishes) but they had a GREAT price even with shipping and just so happened to have the finish and length that I wanted. I did two rows of nail head trim and of the 10 yards that came on the spool I still had some left over, ie: if you're doing a double row of nail head trim the 5 yard spools that seemed more prevalent would not be enough.
Here's the fun part. Two words: staple gun. OH the joy. I bought one specifically for this project from Lowes - click on the staple gun link to see the one I purchased-. I think I spent $17 on it on sale and another $3 on 1/4" staples. You don't need a crazy big/fancy one for this project. I tried to read reviews online about the best staple gun to get for your money but most of them about the hand held basic ones were negative. Basically unless you're needing a staple gun for some serious heavy duty home project any mid-line gun will work. Granted it shot more than a few blanks but it was less than $20, all the staples stuck and the bottom line is: it worked.
Luckily we have a large enough dining room table (there might be a post about it later) that I was able to construct the headboard on it. First I laid out the canvas fabric and ironed the wrinkles and creases out of it. Next went down the quilt batting and on top of that the plywood. With help from my boyfriends lovely sister Sara (I wouldn't recommend doing this project on your own, you definitely need help, even if its only for emotional support) we started stapling. Instead of pulling both the batting and fabric and stapling together as most blogs had suggested doing we pulled and stapled the batting first. Then the canvas. It got pretty dense around the corners so where needed we just trimmed some of the batting while making sure it was still secure.
Putting on the nail head trim was pretty easy, we just started roughly 3' in and went for it. They recommend using a special kind of hammer but unless your hammer head is really beat up I wouldn't worry about it. When it came to the corners the nails didn't exactly line up but where possible we just turned the trim and kept on going. Where it wouldn't turn and we needed to break it we just put a little dab of super glue on the unsecured trim. Haven't had any problems so far.
To hang it I purchased interlocking flush mounts from amazon.com.
It seemed easier than constructing a wood frame in which to connect it to our metal box spring frame but we also aren't worried about holes in our walls. Since the wood wasn't too heavy we just put three across the top (sides and middle) and lined the bottoms up on the wall (difficult and frustrating for someone who doesn't have patience but it was well worth it in the end). And voila! A nail trim upholstered headboard! Wordy enough for ya? :-)  |
| My FABULOUS DIY Headboard |
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