DIY Upholstered Headboard from Cheap-O Art Canvases, Foam & a Shower Curtain

Do you LOVE the look of all those gorgeous upholstered Headboards?  They just scream "cozy" and "snuggle in".

Then you see the $1K price tag, and you decide that the headboard can stay in the DREAM section of your life for a while longer....
 
Or NOT!
 

I wanted a headboard for my 'tween son's room.  Spending big bucks for it was not possible (or smart)...so my noggin started thinking about making one.  I have made one before (it's in my guest room) and it turned out great, but its foundation was specially cut pieces of plywood.  This made it both heavy and unwieldy.  Hard to get home, hard to assemble, hard to put together even with assistance from my Dad.  What if I could find a way to construct it out of something that had less weight and had components that I could easily find, were cheap and could bring home without renting a flatbed truck?!  Think think think....
 
I paint pictures.  Frequently.  Which means that I have various un-painted canvases hanging around in my storage almost all the time (for when inspiration strikes!).  I recently did some very large (4ft x 5ft) paintings, and as I was painting them, I thought...hmmmm... if this canvas was on its side, it would be exactly 60 inches wide which (double hmmm) is the exact width of a Queen Sized Bed!  If I could upholster this canvas with foam, batting and fabric, then I could hang it on the wall securely and it would look and function like a fabulous upholstered headboard!  Cool!
 

I am always pushing the boundaries (downward) of cheap-o-ness, I wondered if I could get the price for the canvas frame even lower...like half.  Well, at a 50% discount of the $99.99 price at Michaels Craft stores, the extra-large 4x5ft canvas (which is not easy to transport home in a normal sized car, so that is another issue) was $50...plus then all the other parts to complete the project; another $40 probably.  Not bad.  I can do better, though.  How about I purchase the 24x30 canvases (4 of them) for less, then assemble them together with bolts and upholster away?!  I was able to find a sale where the four smaller canvases were $7 each...if you can only find them for $10 each, you probably will want to go with the larger 4x5ft canvas for step one, and call it a day (trust me, you will save yourself a lot of steps and grief).  Bolts were about another $5.  This is how I did it...

 

First I measured (carefully) and drilled holes where the bolts would go through both canvases so that I could attach them together.  Then, using the 3.5 inch carriage bolts and nuts, I attached all the canvases together to make one large (fairly) stable surface.  (adding the batting and fabric will make it even more stable in the end).  Be careful to drill in the middle of the wood, since you don't want to split the frame.  (I did pilot holes, and enlarged the drill bit size twice to reduce the strain on the wood as I was drilling.)  I know the front of the finished assembled canvases have weird bulges (where my knees were whilst I was finessing the pieces together), but that matters not, because it will be covered by foam, batting and then fabric)...
 

Then I glued the twin-size $15 cheap-o mattress topper foam from Target (with some strategic cuts) onto the canvas surface.  They foam doesn't need to be completely budge-proof, but I wanted the pieces to be pretty secure for when I started to upholster (and I didn't want any indentations from staples on the front).  The surface of the foam was variegated, but that didn't matter once the batting was in place.
 

Batting next!  I think this was a twin sized quilt batting, and I stretched it to go all the way around to the back on all four sides.  Nice and tight... Staple gun them into place about every 4 inches or whatever looks right to you.
 

Then the fabric...mine was a shower curtain that I already had (waiting to be something cool) that matched the valance and the bed skirt that I had previously made for his room. 

Two clearance $15 shower curtains worth of fabric, and I have a very high-end look indeed!

I did some brass nailheads because I love the shine they add, then I strung some STRONG picture wire on the back, two hangers on the wall (for less side-to-side wiggling) and the headboard is good to go!

 

You can use this to make a smaller or even larger headboard, just adjust the size of the canvases that you buy so that they match the overall width to the head width of the mattress.  You can also adjust the thickness of the foam and the batting to get the loft that you like best.  If you want to "tuft" it, I would map out ahead of time where you want your buttons to be, then if there is a button where a wood stretcher is, just pre-drill a hole to thread the button string through and secure it on the back side.  If there is no wood in the way, use a long upholstery needle to go through the canvas and secure on the backside by tying the string around a small popsicle stick and tying it tightly.


My next headboard will likely be a King-Sized one, covered with Paint Drop Cloth (my favorite Belgian Linen cheat) and with tufts!  I will be sure to post snaps of that one too...(I dreamt last night about how to add those cool side wings to it...)

Have fun, fellow DIY dreamers! 


P.S. Update: He has used it for a week now, and no problems at all with it being attached to the wall or anything.  It looks and acts, for all the world, like a honest-to-goodness headboard! 
 
 
 
 

 
 :) go hawks :)