DIY Upholstered Head Board, Yup I Tried This One Too

Good morning,

Sorry that I disappeared this week, I came down with a bit of a virus and it put me out literally for a few days, but I'm back and just in time for Friday!

Recently I decided to take on the "upholster your daughter's head bard already!" project that I put off for a while, and it's finally finished. It was over all pretty easy except for some unexpected obstacles, and the results are beautiful!

Here was the bed when I started. Pretty lack luster if you ask me.

Bed before:

Bed and room after:

This bed was actually from the guest room of our old house. It's very nice in person, but for the theme of a grown up and sort of cool and glam teen room it just wasn't cutting it. It's called VINSTRA from Ikea, and I thought that it would make an easy mold for the new bed. The problem that I ran in to (after I took it apart and bought all necessary supplies) was that the wicker is wrapped around metal poles and made it a challenge to staple to as well as applying the nail head trim.  I decided to keep the wings off the bed as a result which I was kind of bummed about, but I wanted it to look as nice as possible and with the frame being metal I felt it wouldn't work.

Truthfully, creating this type of upholstered head board is fairly simple and is much like recovering a chair cushion.  You have a mold wrapped in foam and backing and then you pull your fabric around and staple. Voila!

Here is a step by step tutorial for a simple upholstered head beard.

What you'll need:

-A mold of some sort. This is the shape of your bed frame. You can use a ply wood for this. 

-Foam. This is the padding of your headboard and should be the same size as your mold. 

-Backing. This is what covers the foam and smooths the edges of your head board. 

-Fabric. 

-Staple gun and scissors.

Step 1: Start with your wood or mold (in my case the VINSTRA was my mold) and buy foam that you can cut to its size. The foam can be found at most local sewing or craft stores. Cut it to the size of your mold, then glue the foam to the mold to secure it.
 
Step 2: Take some kind of backing material and have it cut to size of your mold and foam leaving yourself an extra 2" around to pull it over the mold and foam and staple it from behind. I used a very inexpensive $2.00 per yd felt that I found. It was less than the actual backing and did the job just as well.

Step 3: Pull your backing around your mold and staple it to the edges. **This was the hard part for me because I had to secure the staples to the actual wicker since the VINSTRA's frame is metal. I simply stapled the heck out of it until it felt secure.

Step 4: Place your new head board (with the foam and backing in place) over your fabric of choice (fabric face down). Repeat step 3 and pull it over your mold and staple it around the edges.

Step 5: Trim off your extra fabric.

Step 6: For me was to apply the nail head trim. Sorry but I didn't take pictures because truthfully I wasn't sure if I could keep them. Since I wasn't working with wood my nail heads had nothing but the wicker frame to attach to and it didn't keep them in place. As a result I had too glue them and press them in as best as I could. THIS WAS SUCH A BUMMER!

** It was VERY challenging to keep the nail heads straight as a result of the bed frame, however if you squint your eyes almost shut and pretty much take away all your vision they can "appear" more straight :) Try it now.

**BTW, I sewed those cute little pom pom tassles on to the chevron pillow. I love pom pom tassles right now and I thought they added a perfect touch to the pillow.

Well, the bed turned out beautifully even though I ran in to some problems. As you will notice in the pictures I changed things around in the room to compliment the new color and pattern. It definitely added that something extra to the room don't you think?