Have you been dreaming of that perfect headboard when you go to sleep every night? Have you looked up every beautiful headboard out there and almost considered paying an arm and a leg for one like I did? No worries, I got ya covered. If you want to save ALOT of money and just put a small amount of work in yourself, then look no further. I'm going to show you how I turned this $30 old door into our stylish new headboard for our master bedroom for only $50!
I was so ready to hop right into this project! But unfortunately we already had so many other projects going on that it ended up sitting in my garage all summer. Finally in the fall I got around to it.
It's a good thing I waited because I lucked out. Cody had found these two old and weathered pieces of wood and brought them home for me (you can see one of the pieces in the picture above). The natural weathered gray was exactly the look I was going for with the frame so no staining needed! Cody just scored 50 points on that find!
Once I knew my project was coming together I got started. First I cleaned off the entire door with a damp rag to get any loose particles off. I didn't want to scrub it because A) I didn't want to chip off more of the paint and B) scrubbing would take away the natural distressed stains. Next, we removed the old door knob and face plate (we weren't able to remove the internals). This part didn't matter so much because we knew it was going to be covered by the bed since this would be the bottom of the headboard.
We screwed them to the door directly from the sides. In the picture above Cody just has the piece flipped to make his pilot holes.
Once they were attached I needed to figure out a top. We grabbed a 2"x4" at Home Depot and cut it lengthwise
to size. We screwed this piece through the top down into the side pieces and along the door.
Next came staining this piece to match the side pieces. This took some testing before I got it right. I was just using everything I had available at home because I was really trying not to run to the store again, but of course I ended up having to go back anyway for some more white wash. What I ended up using was a first coat of Minwax Jacobean and applied a VERY light coat. Be careful using this because it is a very dark stain. I went in small sections and pretty much applied and then wiped right away. You can always do more coats if you don't think it absorbed enough, but if you put on too much it's hard to fix. I needed to use this stain though to give it a slightly dark base. Next I went back and forth applying Minwax Weathered Oak and the Minwax White Wash (in the picture above). If I remember correctly I applied the white wash first (again, doing small sections and wiping immediately after applying) and then doing some Weathered Oak and then some white wash again and so on. I just kept going back and forth until I got it to match up with the side pieces. I also did a light coat of white wash on the side pieces to help blend it all together.
Above you can see the end result after staining.
The last thing to do was to make some sort of base to help raise it off the floor a little. Originally with this design, we intended to attach this to our bed frame. However, once we got the headboard in our room and it stood on its own we decided not to attach it to the bed.
We just found two pieces of scrap wood and screwed them together like an "L" and then attached it to the side pieces. Easy as that!
Hello headboard! Surprisingly this has got to be one of my "thriftiest" projects yet! When I was first thinking of making a headboard I thought for sure I would be spending at least $100 on it. I ended up only spending $30 for the door, $10 for the White Wash and about $7-$8 on the top piece! So under $50? I'll take it!
If you liked this project please share away! Comments and questions are always welcome too. Thanks for reading!
There's plenty more to come! If you want to stay updated, don't forget to go follow my instagram @farmhouseflare and like my Facebook page!
Sincerely,
{Lauren Taylor}
