Saturday, September 12, 2015

Upholstered Headboard


I'm finally back! It's been a crazy past month and a half with move in, recruitment, and classes starting back up but I'm so glad to finally be able to post the tutorial for how I (read: my mom and I) made my upholstered headboard. In the beginning I was actually pretty concerned with how I was going to take a giant sheet of plywood and make a semi-nice looking headboard, but it turned out great! Sending a shoutout to my awesome Mom who helped with a large portion of the manual labor and also many thanks to the middle aged man who laughed at me in the Home Depot parking lot and eventually helped me load a giant sheet of plywood into my backseat. You can make this headboard for any size, I used twin measurements and found someone to cut the plywood into the shape I wanted!

Materials: 
-Sheet of 3/4 inch plywood cut into the size and shape you want
-2x5 cut into the height you need for the headboard legs
- 1.5 yards of foam batting
-2 yards of desired fabric
-Stable gun
-Roll of nailhead trim
-Hammer
-Scissors
 
 {modeling my newest accessories}

{Once the wood is cut into your desired shape and size we will start upholstering the foam onto the wood}

 {Isn't my helper the cutest?!}
 {Begin upholstering the foam using the stable gun, we did not measure anything here, as the fabric will be going over the foam anyways. Do make sure to keep the foam taut so there is no extra when you get to all the sides.}
 {When you come to the corners we found it easiest if you cut slits into the foam so it can be pulled taut while still making sure to keep the shape of the cutout. Repeat this on all sides of the headboard until the foam is fully upholstered onto the wood.}
 {Now that the foam is done, we are ready to begin upholstering with fabric. Lay your wood on top of your chosen fabric and begin to pull the fabric taut- stapling to keep the fabric in place. We got a little staple happy to make sure the burlap stayed put.}
 {When you get to the corners of the headboard, fold them as if you are wrapping a present, making sure there is no extra fabric hanging or loose that will be visible from the front.}
 {We did the exact same thing with the burlap for the side cutouts, cutting slits to make sure we can pull the fabric as tight as possible. Upholster all sides of the headboard making sure to pull tight on the last side so the fabric will look nice from the front.}

{This is what our headboard looked like when we were finished upholstering. Now we're ready for nailhead trim.}
 {We took a roll of nailhead trim from JoAnn's and began to line close to the edge of the headboard. We didn't measure the width-we just eyeballed it to make sure it was staying relatively even and straight. The nailhead trim comes on a roll and every fifth circle you will insert one of the pins shown above. We used a hammer to make sure the nailhead trim was in firm and wouldn't budge.}
 {When we got to the corners we just made sure to stay relatively straight- the trim is metal but bends very easy so it was not as hard as we anticipated!}
 {Yay! This is what our finished headboard looks like. Next we added the cut 2x4 wood pieces as legs, using a drill to make sure it was sturdy enough to hold this up!}
 {I'm so happy with how it turned out!}