Our new Upholstered Headboard

I gave you all a sneak peek of our new headboard last week, but yesterday afternoon, it finally made it's debut in our bedroom!

It took a lot of hard work, and a FULL weekend of sawing, sanding, measuring, drilling, screwing, gluing, upholstering, stapling, over-analyzing, band-aiding, nailing, un-nailing, re-nailing, and perhaps a little cursing somewhere in the middle, but it's finished, and while it almost ended up face down in the middle of the freeway (another story for another day), it's finally in our bedroom, safe and sound at last!

Literally blood, sweat (no tears), and a little stain remover went into this headboard, and I could not be more thrilled with how it turned out.  I am SO PROUD to say that with A LOT of help from my parents, I successfully made my own headboard!

We joked the entire time that the "A-Team" was working on it, and that the "A" stood for "type-A".  It's genetic I swear - we are all just as anal-retentive as one another... so that's probably why it took us two full days instead of one.  It had to be JUST PERFECT - down to the stained (and lacquered) legs that no one will ever see behind the bed.

The full tutorial on what you need, and what we did is on it's way, but in the meantime, here is a full photo dump of my pretty headboard in all it's glory!

After living in this apartment for over a year and a half, this room is FINALLY a room that we want to spend time in.  Up until recently, it had been a catch-all for rejected furniture that didn't belong in the rest of the house.  Slowly but surely, I've been making small updates to the room... making some chevron curtains, painting my furniture, replacing the dinky lamps that were there before, getting a new bed, new rug, new bedding... and the headboard is the final piece to tying this room together.

Do you even remember how this room started out??  Let me refresh your memory...

Scary!

I think I'll also do a post on "the evolution of our bedroom" since it has gone through quite a few changes.  Anyway, getting back to our headboard...

The headboard really anchors the room, and makes the bed the focal point in the space.  While our bedroom gets less light than any other room in our house, I think we finally got it right with the light bedding and pretty blue accents.  Late morning is my favorite time of day in this room - it gets direct light, and feels bright and airy for a few hours before the sun moves beyond these windows.

The mirrors I hung behind the nightstands help reflect light for the rest of the day, and open up the space.

Let's get a close-up of this fabric!

From a distance, you can't see the texture, but it is one of my favorite things about the headboard.  I am usually a VERY indecisive person, but when choosing this fabric, it took me maybe 5 minutes to make up my mind on it.  The nubby texture is my favorite part... and I feel that it has the perfect mixture of tan and grey together, so wall color and bedding will never be an issue.

I started out comparing solid colored linen fabric swatches, but my concern was that if I ever picked out a bedding in a similar neutral tone that it would look like I tried (unsuccessfully) to match the fabrics, but with this texture, there is no risk of that.  I toyed with the idea of white or creme fabric, but if I ever wanted creme colored bedding and had a white headboard, or white bedding but had a creme colored headboard, it wouldn't look right either.

So long story short, the fabric was an easy choice, and I am so in love with it!

I'll also talk about this more in the DIY tutorial, but we went with a nailhead trim - it's actually a strip of connected nail-heads  where you nail in every 5th nail or so.  This made it WAY easier to keep our lines straight, nail-heads evenly spaced, and after going through the process, I can't even IMAGINE tacking in individual nail-heads.  What a nightmare that would have been!

This shot is facing the hallway that connects our bedroom (and bathroom) to the dining room, kitchen, and living room.  It's a bit washed out due to the exposure (I swear, I am going to learn how to take better photos!) but you can KIND OF see the roman shade I made last year.

And as if the universe knew my headboard would be done, it's peony season!  And is there anything better than a big bunch of ruffled pink peonies??

I think not!

I think that this is hands down, my best DIY to date!

What do you think?  Do you love it as much as I do?