I bought three 1?x14? planks and had them cut into six 76? boards (Traditional king beds are 76? wide.). After lugging everything upstairs, I sanded all the boards and laid them out the way I wanted. I made sure the front of the headboard was facing down and the ugliest boards were the bottom to be hidden behind the bed later.

Next, I spread out the metal brackets across all the seams. There were 13 brackets total, each with four screws.

After I finished screwing in all the brackets, I felt that the headboard needed more support. Since I live in an apartment, I was uneasy about screwing all the boards into the wall. I also didn’t want any hardware showing on the front of the headboard. So I went back to the hardware store for two stabilizer boards. I had them cut 55? long so they would be hidden behind the 60? headboard. I simply nailed the support boards across all six planks.

From the get-go, I knew I wanted to decorate this headboard but I didn’t know exactly how. I thought about staining and painting the wood but I was working on the apartment balcony and wanted to minimize mess. I also considered freehand painting something like the word “Dream” or stenciling a large feather across the entire headboard. Well I’m not much of a painter and I couldn’t find a stencil large enough. I even bought a few sheets of poster board intending to cut my own large stencil. That task just seemed daunting so I went back to the craft store and found a beautiful damask stencil. I chose gold spray paint to keep the embellishment subtle and painted an all-over pattern on the headboard.

When the paint was dry, this monster headboard had to be pushed across the apartment because there was just no lifting it. I leaned it against the bedroom wall at enough of an angle to keep it up. What do you think?