.DIY headboard

Look what I made! A tufted headboard. We finally feel like adults, and now we can comfortably sit in bed and read or watch TV. This was such an easy project too, I decided to make a little tutorial for the blog.

supplies:

pegboard

upholstery foam

batting

Foam Board PL glue

button covering kit

upholstery fabric

staple gun

extra strong thread

long 6" upholstery needle

regular buttons

Step 1: Cut the pegboard to the width of your mattress and whatever height you prefer. MAKE SURE that the holes are symmetrical before you cut it. It's best if you have a hole right in the center of the board.

Step 2: Find the center and place the buttons in the pattern that you like and make sure you have enough (I had to go buy more). Mark the holes that you want to have buttons in.

Step 2: Glue the upholstery foam to the pegboard using PL Foam Board glue.

My upholstery foam came in three sections (it was actually a fold-up bed before) because upholstery foam can be VERY pricey. I got mine for $14.

Step 3: I layed out my fabric and 2 layers of batting (I wanted it extra cushy) and cut it down to size. You will need at least 10 inches of excess fabric all around.

Step 4: Make sure the batting is laying perfectly flat with no creases and wrap both layers around the whole thing and staple it in.

Step 5: Do the same with the fabric taking extra care around the corners to fold it nicely and staple further in than the batting staples.

Be careful not to try pulling staples out because the pegboard can get broken. But I stapled the crap out of that thing.

Step 6: Covering the buttons in fabric. The kit comes with a "pattern" so you will know what size of circles you'll need. Trace and cut out the circles of fabric then it's actually really easy to pop the buttons into the little tools it comes with.

Step 7: I hovered my headboard between a barstool and counter so I could sew the buttons in from underneath. You could also just lean it up against a wall and work sideways.

Using the holes in the pegboard that you marked for buttons, just put the needle and thread through and put a button on, then push the needle back down. It is difficult to find the hole again on the way down, but it is possible! Just try to keep the needle VERY straight. On the backside you put the thread through a regular button and tie a knot. You will need another person to help press the buttons in while you tie the knot. The button holds everything in place.

Step 8: You could mount it to the wall using hooks and screws… We just placed it there and it has never fallen yet! haha

I don't know if you can tell but the fabric I chose has a really nice gold thread going through it that glistens when the light hits it. So beautiful.

Simple enough right? I saved so much money by taking a little time to make my own, it feels extra good!

.project ten: basement

Before (basically):

When we bought this house the basement was a whole other story. Apparently we didn't even get a legit "before" photo of it because it was so ugly I thought it might break our camera. These first photos I took of the basement are from after we took out the big boards off the pony wall and the baseboards.

Everything down there was nasty. The pink carpets were COVERED in stains and hair and dirt. The baseboards were sticky and oozing and had a million little crumbs and odds and ends stuck behind them. The walls were dented every couple of inches and painted right up onto the ceiling with a nice peachy tan color. Gag. The basement had obviously been renovated by someone who had no idea what they were doing and the electrical was a mess, as were all of the finishings. It really was a nightmare and we had soooo much to do, we had to start small and focus on one part at a time.

So the first thing we focused on were the pony walls. We tore out these big weird boards they had nailed on and put in new drywall and clean corners.

Unfortunately the framing under the boards was extremely uneven and also disgusting. We had to do some leveling before we could drywall over it

The mudding of all these corners and edges was impossibly hard and took us forever…

Here's the men at work:

One of the two bedrooms had this extremely low duct on the ceiling, which we discovered was just framed badly and had a ton of empty space below the ductwork. Air went ahead and tore it down, re-did the framing, put up new drywall and wa-la!

Mom and Dad came to help me paint everything!! So thankful to them for all the hours of work they have put into this renovation for us.

(for reference, my paint choice is the middle one here by Behr):

We finally said goodbye to the pink carpet and everything looked completely different.

Thanks so much to these awesome family members for coming to do the heavy labor since I was kinda prego...

Carpet installers came and we were over-the-moon excited when we saw the new underlay being fitted… and that night we got to go peek at it before he came back to finish the next day. HEAVEN!!!

And then it was DONE!

Mom and Dad came back to help with a few more touch-ups, and Air worked on baseboards for dayzzzzz:

One final project that Air wanted to do was make a little door for this weird little hole in the wall that connects to the space under the stairs. We figured it would be nice to have access from both sides so he just made it look super nice.

here's the hole with tons of boxes shoved in there (don't mind the mess):

and the finished project:

And that's about it! We also got a new washer/dryer in the laundry room… but that room still needs a lot more work. Maybe we'll renovate it someday?

more to come, of course!