I have wanted a similar headboard to this one for a while. The only thing standing in my way was the $2400 it would cost to buy and have delivered. The bed is by Viva Terra and it is stunning.
Recently my friend Cheryl offered me some reclaimed cedar that came off her lake house during a renovation. If you grew up going to Texas lake houses built in the 70’s then you probably saw some of this one foot wide cedar hung vertically. A lot of those homes are still covered in the cedar but most of them are now painted, not stained like they were originally, which by the way causes cedar to rot over time. A new king sized bed along with the gift of the wood meant it was time to get my headboard built. If you read the post yesterday you know we also added a ship lap wall to the bedroom.
Remodelaholic had a great tutorial to make the bed here.
The headboard was easy to build especially since we opted not to make the bed frame. This girl needs storage under her bed for art that changes seasonally ( a bed skirt is a must to hide my stuff) and I love having a bench at the end of the bed to put on shoes. ( My bench needs to be recovered but we are still negotiating the bedroom color scheme.)
I drew off a template on roll paper folded in half. It isn’t exactly like the picture above, but it works for me. We taped the template up on the wall to make sure I liked the height once the wall was completed and the new bed was assembled to make sure I liked the height. I even added the big square pillows to make sure I liked it.
The nice folks at Viva Terra even provide their bed dimensions on the website. Because we went with a traditional frame and box spring our mattress is higher than the one pictured above. We had to make our headboard 70 inches high vs. the 65 inches on their diagram.
Hubby built a frame from 2 X 4’s to support the wood. He doubled the 2 X 4’s on the vertical portions. ( Do you see his drawing? Wonder why I call him Mr. Math?)
I sanded down one side of the cedar with my sander until it was smooth then we cut it to length based on the template then we nailed the boards to the frame. I drew the template onto the wood with chalk then Hubby cut it out with a skill saw. I can use a skill saw but by this point the whitewashing and sanding had taken a toll on my arm.
Once it was cut out, I sanded the boards again then painted on three coats of poly.
My one small, and I am not sure if it is a regret yet, is that I sort of wish I had stained it a little darker. The cedar ended up a little lighter than I wished but all in all I really like the look. The cedar from our lake house was darker once it was polyurethaned as you can see in our table top.
It took three coats of poly to even tell I had any on the bed and there is no way I would sand it back down, but eventually, if it bugs me, I may add tinted poly to the bed. Right now I am oh so very pleased with the results of our weekend’s work. It took three 2 X 4’s , a package of 60 grit sandpaper and left over polyurethane to complete this project. We have $15.00 in this beauty if you can believe it. The end tables and lamps are thrift store pieces that I worked on two years ago. I love them still and I am very happy about how they look with the new wall.
I am really proud of our effort on this space.
Doesn’t the bedroom look beautiful?
Full disclosure here. I took this photo this morning and don’t like that I can see the 2X4 frame. You can only see it from this angle but it will bug me. We have plenty of wood to clad the legs so that is on the agenda tonight. We thought the legs would be totally behind the bed. That will be an after work project this week. You often don’t see the errors until you take a photo.
Here are some updated photos with the fixed sides and the coral added.
Thanks for taking the time to look at our work. This week I am going to have you help me with he color scheme in the bedroom because we are stuck. I used teal accents because my inspiration photo showed it with those two colors but Hubby is not a fan. He is also not a fan of navy and coral. hmmm.
I hope you have a wonderful day,
Blessings,
Karen