The Saga of my Guest Room Headboard

They were in really good shape. I just had to remove the thin wood pieces that were holding them together on both sides from the side I was planning to use as the front.

Then I removed the screws and the hinges. These will be saved to be used who knows when for who knows what, but I’m sure they’ll come in handy someday for something.

Then I pretty much sanded my arms off. My electric sander is pretty old and using it is quite the reverberating workout.

The height of the shutters was 43″. I measured this height behind the bed to decide where I wanted to hang the shutters. I decided that they were tall enough to just sit on the floor.

We have 8″ baseboards in the guest room so I measured 8″ up the slats on the back of the shutters, cut them with a saw and removed with a  hammer and chisel.

The plan was that the slats would sit on top of the baseboard and flush against the wall.

I have no idea what happened to the pics of my spray painted shutters. When I went to look for them they were gone. Whoops!

After they were painted on one side I took the shutters into the house and upstairs. I used one of the slats that I removed from the front to attach the two shutters at the back. I used both liquid nails and large finishing nails.

I decided I wanted to put something on the top of the headboard and I remembered that I had a dump-rescued gingerbread-like thingy somewhere, so I set off to look for it and found it in my greenhouse of all places. I have no idea what it was doing in there.

It has a leafy pattern in it.

I took it apart and spray painted two sections in the same blue as the shutters.

As you can see in the photo below my shutters are not sitting on the floor as originally planned. This is because when I actually saw them in place I thought as a headboard they were just too low.

So the centre slat was attached so that it sits on the baseboard, and I used screws to secure the headboard to the baseboard and to the wall near the top.

Then I drybrushed a lighter blue over the dark blue, just to give it some interest.

I attached the table leg pieces to the top of the shutters with liquid nails. Here you can also see the difference between the drybrushed side on the left and the non-drybrushed side on the right.

I thought I’d better add some painter’s tape to hold the legs in place until they cured, and I filled in the miscellaneous holes and painted over them.

Once done I added this thrifted $1 vintage Paris silver souvenir ash tray with the Eiffel Tower front and centre.

And that’s it! This headboard cost me just $1 for the Paris centrepiece. I just love an almost free project.

There were days when I thought the guest room was going to be headboardless for another 15 years, but I guess when the right one comes along you just know it.

Thanks so much for reading!

XOX