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It’s Hammer Time

Well……more like pneumatic nailer time….but how could I miss an opportunity to make a reference to one of my 1980 idols. This project has been one of my favorites. It was super easy, really quick, and I think it turned out pretty awesome. It’s not quite finished…we still need to figure out how we are going to stain it (I’m most likely going to try out a method that I’ve been waiting to use for a while now—stay tuned), but for now it’s a welcomed addition to our thrown together guest room.

And if you’ve been reading along here you may already know that this is made completely out of pallets….i.e. other than the time spent on it, it was absolutely FREE for me to make. Here’s my two pieces of inspiration….imagine this pallet wall mixed with this headboard building plan from Ana White;

So that was my vision. I took some measurements of our guest bed and modified the plan to my liking. I made mine 54” tall as opposed to 57” and 54.5” wide. I started out by laying out my thick pieces of wood from the pallets. I cut two to 54” and two to about 47”. Those 4 pieces made my basic frame. I used my Kreg jig to make some pocket holes and then used wood glue, some clamps, and pocket screws to join it all together.

Because I was going for the pallet wall look as well as I didn’t have any pallet pieces long enough to cover the whole span, I needed to place two more support pieces. I tried to split the difference as best as I could and ended up placing one support at 18” on center and the other at 36” on center. Same process; Kreg, wood glue, clamps, screws. Also, I should note that I put all the nice sides face down onto the cement and applied some weight and pressure each time I screwed in the boards. After it was all screwed together, I then flipped it over so that all the nice/flush joints would be the side that I would nail all my boards to.

*If you don’t like this look but want to use pallets, you can follow the same plan (minus the two supports) and place your planks vertically instead of horizontally.

It’s all downhill from here. Everything else I did I used my finish nailer and 1” nails. It pops together real quick and is low labor. I pulled out all my boards and cut some down to 18” and the rest to 36”. I needed 9 for each. I wanted the rustic look, so I was real intentional about picking out boards that had some character to them, still had the nail heads in them, and varied in shade/texture. Once I had all my boards cut, I laid out my pattern to see how it would all fit and to move boards around so it was varied. Once I was happy with it, I actually then moved it all off the headboard and moved it back on row by row. I decided to start from the top and work my way down.

Once I had all those nailed I decided to sand it all down. I wanted to remove some of the dirt, smooth it out, and make sure that our guests don’t get splinters every time they stretch out their arms and yawn. I switched from a 80 grit sandpaper on my orbital sander to 220 grit. You might not be able to tell a difference in the picture but you could definitely feel a difference.

After that, it was just a matter of creating some sort of trim for everything. Your goal is to cover up some of the ugly parts while adding some depth and texture to everything. I started by creating a border around the whole front. I then sanded all of that down (forgot to take a picture of this step). I then added some trim to the sides. I didn’t have pieces that were long enough so I decided to add a whole piece from the top and then added a small piece at the bottom. The board for the top wasn’t long enough either so I decided to cut it so that it lined up with the other seams. I also sanded everything down between each step.

The last step was to add one more final board to the top. It needed to be slightly wider than the other ones and slightly longer. Once again, none of my boards were long enough to span the entire distance so I cut it to length to line up with the opposite of the other seams. Once again, I forgot to take a picture of this step…..so instead I’ll draw some arrows. Really….this project came together so fast it was real hard to not get wrapped up in the moment.

Your “top” plate needs to be wider than this board and you’ll want it a little longer (about an inch on each side). Everything is flush on the backside.

This board has a seam here that runs even with the planks…..

So the top plate, I put a seam here.

So about 45 minutes later and we were done. I moved it up into our guest room and it fits nice and snug onto our basic medal bed frame. I haven’t done this yet, but all I’ll need to do is drill a hole in the bottom of the headboard and throw a bolt/nut through that and the bed frame to secure it in place.

Disclaimer…..don’t hate on the current decor too much….Ellie has big plans for a guest room overhaul at some point in the near future.

I’ve got an idea for something that I want to try out to stain the headboard but I’m also open to suggestions. How would you stain/finish this headboard? Any ideas?

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