Strategies for Homemade Headboards for Single Beds
Invest your modest budget to your re-do of a child’s room when she transitions from nursery-age to cool-little-person. Make the upholstery to finish off a double bed, using interesting trash from around the house, or items which you pick up from a flea market, discount store or the paint store. A prosperous headboard may be an illusion as easily as it can be a solid panel of vintage timber or a window colour. Save enough to get a new set of bed linens by doing it yourself.
Immediate Tropical Retreat
Unfurl a bamboo shade the approximate width of one bed and attach its three wires to eye hooks screwed into ceiling joists over the bed, about one-third down from the face Use a carpenter’s level and tape measure to mark the spots to get two ornamental curtain rod holders on the wall behind the face of the bed. The pole sits from the wall about a foot higher than a typical headboard height. Install the pole or a painted wood dowel — and stretch the bamboo shade to the wall, drape it to a shallow bend over the bed, and fasten it in place with the curtain pole. The rest of the shade hangs horizontal down from the wall to end somewhere behind the bed, taking the place of a regular headboard even as it is a component of this draped false canopy over the bed.
Hat Trick
Mary Poppins would love a decorative bed canopy and headboard in a girls’ room which provides a place to hang a hat — actually, many hats. Prop open a painted and shellacked silk or paper umbrella, cut away the rear part of the spokes, and mount the umbrella on the wall so that it fans out just like a half-canopy over the bed. Arrange a collection of pretty straw boaters and other ornamental hats under the umbrella-canopy. Mark the areas that correspond with the umbrellas, screw in fancy hooks, and include the hooks and hats to the wall. Between the ornamental hats, add more hooks to get regular hats, caps and visors so that the wall behind the face of the bed looks like a dream millinery — and she can always find her hat.
Paint Plus
Paint the wall behind the bed a solid color, cut the city skyline from a stick-on cityscape wall mural, and stick the cut-out silhouette on the wall behind the bed so that the skyline forms the headboard. Cut out shapes such as planes, trees, clouds or birds from the leftover mural pieces and stick them separately on the wall to create a scene. Or cover that wall with chalkboard paint and draw a headboard on it in contrasting white or coloured dot. Spray clear matte fixative over the chalked-on headboard if you want it to stay intact and unembellished by the artist who sleeps in the bed. Leave the rest of the chalkboard unsealed because no one likes to discourage great art.
Salvaged Siding and Shutters
Mount vertical weathered barn boards or an old distressed louvered shutter supporting the bed and trim the timber to achieve 3 inches past the bed frame on each side. Add rustic hooks to the barn board or S hooks to the louvers for hanging miniature planters or bud vases by ribbons or chains, and hooking the image wires behind framed photographs to the headboard. For a shabby-chic-style bedroom, then whitewash the old wood. In a boho bedroom, then slap on some random bright-colored paint or graffiti to liven up things. Seal the distressed wood with clear lacquer after smoothing any tough spots.