Operation Guest Room Recovery

Remember this padded headboard and these side tables and this guest room reveal? Well, we decided to upgrade the entire guest room using the same materials and spending little to no money. It's great to see how far we have come in 2 years. We have worked on some amazing projects and still have a lot more lined up that just amaze me. I’m so excited and thankful for how how far JT and I have come. We also have amazing friends/mentors who have been instrumental to improving our home decor, woodworking and designing skills. 

First off, here is where we started from. 

Guest Room Before

Not too bad but the side tables were starting to bother me (seeing as we are now such great builders :) ). I really hated our attempt at staining the wood; the construction was a little too shabby. Our first move was to disassemble all 4 side tables and reconstruct them into 2 side tables. We wanted to maintain a modern look with open storage so JT and I came up with a design. The original tables were 2 different sizes so the resulting tables are 2 different sizes. 

new design

We painted them grey and added a silver drawer pull to give the illusion of a drawer. I am pretty sure some guests will pull on the dummy drawer and be shocked .

side table with grey paint

The next project was a quick one, I updated the map shades. I wanted to the lamps to the side table. I followed this tutorial here without the ribbon.

materials used

refinished lamps

And finally the Pièce de résistance….the head board!!!! We got some lovely purple upholstery fabric that was on Mega sale with silver nail head trim to update the headboard.

We wanted some curves to the room so after taking of the backing fabric and taking off come of the foam and batting we measured some points, used a bowl to cut off the curve and then used the first piece to cut out the second piece

cut off 2 corner arcs using a plastic bowl

Next, we roughly cut off about 1/2 and inch off foam around the top and sides for the nail head trim.

The hardest part by far was adding on the nail head trim. That took about 2 hours while everything else took minutes. We started with the top, continued to the right side and finally the left side. 

 

adding the nail-head trim

We used a cover button kit to make 7 buttons. After some measurements we placed 3 buttons on the top row and 4 buttons on the bottom. The bottom half of the headboard is covered by pillows so we didn't see a need to have more than 2 rows. We passed the buttons through the holes using a long embroidery needle and embroidery thread. 

back view of holes for buttons

Buttons on 

Finally, with some team effort and nip-tucking we secured the bottom using the staple gun. I reinforced the entire perimeter at the back then attached the back cover to kepe things neat (felt from the old headboard)

back cover to keep things neat and tidy

These were a really fun projects, it took about a day to get all three projects done.

ready for guests 

I believed Operation Recovery was a success if I do say so myself.

Padded Headboard

I got tired of my old headboard from college and wanted to do something about it. It’s been 7 years since I bought that headboard and by the way, I got a great deal on it with 2 side tables and a chest of drawers; they served me well. I decided to give someone else an opportunity to enjoy the headboard and get a more “modern” headboard for one of the “soon to be” guest rooms.

Thanks to HGTV and numerous blog searches, I came across an idea that I liked for a queen headboard

Here is a picture of my old faithful headboard (the side table didn't make it into the picture and the chest of drawers already found a new home J)

The list of materials needed for this project:

· 64 X 44 inch, ¾ inch thick pine sheet

· 2-64 inches wide pieces of 2” high density foam

· Low Loft Batting

· Felt cloth for Backing

· Fabric for headboard cover

· Tacky spray adhesive

· 3-inch wide, 1 inch thick pine planks cut into

• 1-57 inch piece
• 1-49 inch piece
• 2-53 inch pieces
• 1-29 inch piece
• 2-16 inch pieces

Below is a schematic of the design CB and I came up with

In addition to the materials, we needed nails, power drill, staple/nail gun, hammer, and screwdriver

The first step was laying out the headboard to make sure the pieces fit properly. Because the width of the pine plank was not exactly 3-inches, we had to do some “engineering calculations” to set-up the headboard body and frame.

64 X 44 inch, ¾ inch thick pine sheet

Laying the pine planks for the frame

The second step: attach the pieces of wood that form the frame to the pine sheet using 1” screws. We used 3-5 nails per piece of wood depending on the strength (we used 3 on frame side and 2 on the other side)

1" screw on frame side

Screws going in on plank side to reinforce frame

Leg Reinforced

Headboard looking strong

Third step: cut the 2” HD foam to size using a knife, no one will see the rough edges once we put the padding (CB didn’t see the need to buy an electric knife because of the high density foam)

We cut the foam on the right to match the length of the headboard (Doggie found the high density foam comfortable)

Fourth step: glue the HD foam to the headboard using the tacky spray glue. We waited 30-45 minutes and played with the doggie while this dried.

Once we were satisfied with the drying, we pulled the batting tight over foam and went crazy with the staple gun setting it in place. It is good to have one person pulling tight and the other stapling so you don’t have folds and kinks in the batting.

HD foam wrapped in batting

CB and I repeated the process for the gold fabric we choose. We plan on doing a dark chocolate brown accent wall sometime in the “not so near” future so that the gold fabric will pop against the accent wall.

Headboard 80% ready

We brought out the metal frames to make sure our design was right and drilled holes to attach metal frames

Final step: cover the frame and the back with some cheap felt fabric so the wood and nails aren’t scratching the wall and so the back looks pretty too

Back of headboard covered (doesn't have to look extra pretty)

We stained the leg of the head board to match the side tables we made

My next post will be the big reveal of the two rooms with a few accents. Can’t wait to share pictures of the rooms that will be the future guest rooms in the CB & Jumi house J