Headboard

I recently got fixated on making a headboard for our bed.  Now that I have my pretty new curtains I felt the need to keep going with making our bedroom a little more snazzy.  Originally, I was going to use an old door we had at the house, throw some foam and some fabric on it and call it a day.  Thing is, it couldn't just be that easy.  Take a good long look at this picture and tell me if you see the problem (pretend our bed is not sitting on the floor and that it is actually up on a frame like the normal bed it will be very soon):

Do you see the problem?  Let me make that plural, do you see the problems?

Light switches.  They get in the way of any normal, easy headboard.  I had to get funky.  And by funky, I mean so funky that I had to make an old-school rigged up compass with two pencils and yarn in-between in order to complete my project.  I'm not kidding. 

Proof: 

But guess what?  It did the trick!! I went from a solid sheet of OSB:

To this beauty:

The homemade compass worked like a charm to create the shape I needed!  Those swoops on the side will do just the trick for avoiding the light switches but still allowing me a big, beautiful headboard.

I always get a little excited when I need to use a power tool.  I get all "I am woman, hear me roar".  What would be the female version of the grunt that Tim the Tool Man Taylor does?  Someone let me know, I need some kind of fun noise to make whenever I use a power tool. This one below is a jigsaw.

After cutting my shape, I needed foam.  Thing is, 2" foam from the craft store costs a pretty penny.  I got to thinking about other foam I could use and settled in on an egg-crate bed topper from Target - yay for back to school sales!  You know what I'm talking about, right?  This guy for $25.  Which certainly beats the "real" foam from a fabric store which could have cost me upwards of $150.00. 

First, I laid out my foam (egg-crate side down so that the part facing out would be smooth) over my new headboard and cut around it so that my foam would fit over my headboard. Here it is all cut out.

FYI, I used some spray adhesive to glue it down.

For the next layer I needed batting, which I found at my local craft store for $9.99.  There are more expensive options for batting, but I didn't feel the need to get too fancy.  Plus I was interested to see how inexpensively I could accomplish a decent headboard. 

Unfortunately my staple gun did not have enough power to drive staples into the OSB, so I had to buy some upholstery tacks (super cheap) and just nail them in.  Since the back of the board will not show, I wasn't concerned with making it pretty.  

After the batting came the fabric.  

I learned that cutting little tabs helped smooth the fabric around the curves easier:

(mostly) Finished product:

The bed is still on the floor, but you get the idea. Light switch problem solved!  Once we get our bed frame in (Lee is building it), we can then actually attach the headboard to make it a permanent fixture.  So keep in mind it will be higher up on the wall when the project is complete.  I'll post pictures when it's done!

Price Breakdown:
Sheet of OSB: $11.99
Foam: $25
Batting: $9.99
Fabric: $30.00 (half-price sale going on at Jo-Ann Fabric)
Upholstery Tacks: $2.45

Total: $79.43ish

I thought that seemed like a great price to end up with a decent headboard, and I realized how right I was when I opened up my latest Pottery Barn catalog that came in the mail last week:

There is this headboard  for $899.

 or

This one for $699

Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt the pottery barn headboards are far better quality, but to have a similar headboard for $80 seems like a steal.

ps. I got the idea here.  She has a great list of materials and a detailed how-to!