Trash to Treasure

Ok, so it wasn't really 'trash' to begin with, but our latest project turned a FREE king-sized headboard that totally DIDN'T match our bedroom furniture to a treasure that we are pretty darn excited and proud about!  Check it out!

The headboard came free courtesy of my friend's parents.  We had just upgraded to a king sized bed from our queen (oh the angels are singing), but didn't want to shell out the money for a headboard.  So, we suffered with pillows sliding off the head of the bed each night.  So, when they offered us the headboard for FREE, we of course jumped on the chance...nevermind the fact that it didn't match!

The headboard was in good condition -- only problem was the honey pine color.  The rest of our bedroom set is a walnut color.  So, the first step was to sand down the entire headboard (knobby posts and all) and get down to the bare wood.  Max worked really hard getting this part done -- it was quite a chore because the stain and polyurethane gunked up the sand paper pretty quickly. 

Next step was to restain the entire headboard walnut to match the rest of our furniture.  Luckily, with nice weather this past weekend, it dried pretty quickly.

See the four inset squares in the headboard?  We had an idea to transform that part too.

Fabric squares!  Max cut four squares to fit the holes and then I searched out upholestry fabric and used padding to make four padded fabric squares.

Looks pretty nice here in the garage....but what about the bedroom?

Here is our bedroom pre-headboard.  Lucky you, you get to visit our bedroom on a day the bed is actually made!  :)

And here it is WITH the new headboard!  Pretty schnazzy, eh?  We are totally in LOVE with it!  Can you believe it's the same headboard we started with?  This one:

Yeah, I like the new one better too!

I definitely won't miss our pillows falling off the bed every night.  But, I WILL miss little Max peering over the head of the bed every morning on the weekend, telling me that "ABCD fell down!!"  I have no idea when the first four letters of the alphabet fell down under the head of our bed, but they have consistently been there for the past few months....  :)

Oh yeah, and the best part is that if we ever change our bedding or the colors of our bedroom, I can just exchange out the fabric in those four inset squares to match!  I'm not allowed to change the stain or color if we get a new bedroom set, however.  Big Max has already warned me that will not go over so well....