My bed was feeling very incomplete without well - a bed. It was just sitting on a basic frame. I love a good 4 poster as much as the next girl but given my studio situation I didn't want to close off/overwhelm the space with a big bed. I also didn't want to ship my beautiful Mahogany Bed (that project here!) from 12 hours away. I looked all over the internet for the right combination of shape, color and price but couldn't find my goldilocks bed so I decided to bust out my tools and make my own! Here is my step-by-step:
First, I freehanded the shape to see how it looked and to get the right height:
Fair warning: this is a challenging shape to upholster and is best done with a pliable fabric if you are a beginner upholsterer!
Next I laid out my pattern on some 1/4 inch plywood I got from Lowes and marked it with a sharpie.
I reinforced the back with a second strip of plywood where I would be attaching the bracket for mounting to the wall. I used some Gorilla Glue for wood glue. Who needs wood clamps when you have the heaviest textbooks known to man?
Then it was time to break out the jigsaw. Move slowly with the cuts when doing the curves or you will break a blade or two.
I then set off in search of fabric. I found this crazy enormous warehouse SR Harris Fabric Outlet in Minneapolis. I had a very specific color in mind because I was trying to match my loveseat. The only one I ended up finding was a Sunbrella brand which has less stretch than I would have liked and made the upholstery more challenging but it need up being fine in the end. On the upside - it won't fade in the sun.
While there I picked up batting and 1" high density foam. I adhered it with 3M Super 77 spray adhesive.
I cut the batting to have a few inch border and wrapped two layers and stapled in place working to keep things taut so everything would be smooth under the fabric.
Sorry the lighting in my apt is a bit yellow so the colors in my photos are a bit off :(
I could have easily stopped here but I'm a glutton for punishment apparently so I decided to take things further and go for a more upscale look by adding nail head trim.
Here are the nails that I got online. There are tons of color and style options but order maybe 30% more than you need because you can count on bending and breaking quite a few.
I used a hammer with a felt pad on the tip to prevent scratching of the nails rather than buying a new hammer specifically for this purpose. There are specific tools for helping you space the nails but they aren't as helpful if you are working on a curve and are capable of eyeballing things.
Here is the final product!
Finally it was time to hang the headboard. I just used a "French Cleat" type system from Lowes.
The colors don't match in the photo but in real lighting they are pretty close.
Thanks for reading!
