Headboard Reveal

We finished the headboard! To be honest, it was a little anticlimactic. In my head the headboard was going to transform our bedroom from this:

To this:

Unfortunately the headboard did not create a dramatic ocean view type change in the room. It is definitely a step in the right direction but we definitely still have a long way to go. Ok..here it is now.

What do you think?? I'm pretty happy with it. I'm trying to figure out if it's too tall. It was really hard to mount though and it's already covering the top of an outlet under the bed so if we want to shorten it we're going to have to un-upholster the bottom and either cut a hole for the outlet or chop a foot off the bottom of the headboard. Those options make me believe it's current height is actually perfect :)

I used THIS tutorial from Thrifty Decor Chick almost to the letter. If you want to do this I suggest you follow her post but I'll post a few pictures of my experience.

I finally got to put my big craft table to use, although it did mean using my jigsaw inside which meant sawdust everywhere!

Here you can see all the different angles that I used and nixed before finally settling on one. I just used a bucket and traced it a few times until I was happy with the size and angle. Then I just jigsawed it out and flipped it over so the other side was the exact same size.

I decided to tuft the headboard so I had to drill holes in the plywood before I upholstered it. It took me forever to measure it out and make it even all over. You can see the million marks here. At first I did the bottom vertical line, then the boxed one, then the boxed one with the arrow. The actual hole ended up in the circle. Crazy...lots of trial and error! Luckily this will all be hidden so it doesn't matter! You just want to make sure your tufts are evenly spaced throughout.

Upholstering time! I used two full sized foam mattress pads as my foam because they were way cheaper. Each one was about $10 at Walmart where it would have been closer to $50 at the craft store. My original plan was to do a bold yellow for the fabric but I couldn't find what I wanted. I even took a chance and ordered some fabric online but it was a total bomb. I ended up going with something a little more neutral but I'm happy with it.

Ugh...these stupid buttons! The girl on Thrify Decor Chick had no problems with them. I could not get them to work. I don't know if my fabric was too thick or what but the buttons were not working for me at all. I was able to salvage them with hot glue but it was kind of annoying to buy this expecting it to work and it didn't.

Tufting is not that hard. All it took was a long upholstery needle, some wax thread, and my button! I threaded the needle through the holes I had drilled previously, then threaded my button on the other side and pushed the needle back through and tied around a staple on the back. Just pull them as deep as you want your tufts to be. There are lots of tutorials online about tufting and this is definitely the most basic version of it. 

Here it is all tufted!

Next I trimmed it out with nail head trim. You totally cannot see this detail in person. Seriously...you have to be at just the right angle that no one will ever be at...but whatever. It was super easy to do. I bought this attached trim so that I didn't have to do every nail individually. This stuff is awesome!

Basically there is a pre-made hole in ever 6-7 nail heads that you nail a real nail head through. It caps right over top and blends right in. Pretty genius!

Ignore the extra fabric in the back, here it is all done!

Finally, mounting it was a bear! I bought these flush mount brackets. They have worked perfectly and we put as much of it as we could into studs and used anchors where we couldn't get a stud. We measured and leveled and did math and prayed that they would line up. What I didn't think about was that once we got the brackets on we would have to blindly try to match the bracket on the wall up to 

the bracket on the back of the headboard.  Derrick had the genius idea of running a line of tape up and out from each of the brackets on the wall. We did the same with the headboard and then we just lined up the tape, pushed it hard against the wall, and slid it down. I cannot believe it worked! It meant we measured perfectly so the brackets lined up with each other and it made an impossible task relatively simple. Gotta love that brainy husband of mine. 

So, anyways, that's that! It's growing on me everyday. At first it just really didn't make that big change that expected it to but we still have such a long way to go in this room. Art being next on my list and new bedding not far behind. Hope you like it!