Headboard

Sometimes it’s challenging to work around what you have when it isn’t something you’d choose. This was our bedroom in one of our rentals. Our whole bedroom was “blah” to say the least.

When I finally got to pick the colors for our bedroom, I began to explore the idea of a headboard also. My inspiration came from this. I liked the simplicity of it. It was cheap and something I could do myself!

After purchasing the lumber, I tried to stain it. But after about 3 coats, it still wasn’t the color I wanted. (The board on the left is the original lumber. The one on the right is after 3 coats…) Note to self: *Not all stains are created equal.

Here are all four boards. 
So I scrapped the stain idea and instead painted the boards black. Would I do it the same way again? Maybe. Had I known about Zar stain back then though, I may have gotten the color I wanted with only 1-2 applications. Here’s a more recent project (more on that later) that I applied 1 coat of Zar and got this rich, pretty color. Did I mention Zar stain is the best?

Mounting the headboard was a 2 person job. My husband helped me be sure the boards were level while we screwed a screw into each end of each board. After we mounted our new headboard, I painted the screw heads black so they weren’t so obvious.