Headboard done!

Ok... So when I left off, I had 4 more steps for finishing my headboard. I decided to do 2 rows of 5 buttons. I triple- or quadruple-measured my marks for where the buttons would go. Then I drilled small holes so that I could thread the buttons through the headboard. I used the drill depth gauge since I only needed to drill through the thin plywood.

The next step was to attach the foam and fabric to the frame. In case you didn't know already, craft store foam is expensive. I ended up getting a 1 inch mattress topper and cutting it in half in order to double it over so I'd have 2 inches of foam over the plywood. I easily saved 50%. I glued the two pieces together to make it easier to attach to the plyboard As I mentioned in the last post, I left extra plywood on the bottom so that it wouldn't be as top-heavy. Because of this I had to completely attach the bottom of the foam/fabric first. Since the foam was technically 2 pieces glued together, I stapled the bottom layer of foam and the fabric to the plywood. That kept the top layer of foam plush.


Then I flipped it over and stapled the centers of the other 3 sides. I pulled everything taut as I stapled from the center to the corners. I cut off extra foam and fabric (especially in the corners). I used a lot of staples.

With some of the extra foam and fabric I covered ten buttons. I bought one kit for covering buttons and then other "refill" cover button packs. They were surprisingly easy to do: fabric, foam, button top, press and fold fabric, button back, and press again. Voila! covered buttons!

Attaching the buttons... much harder. There are a couple of tricks to add buttons to a headboard so that they are inset into the foam a little. I had read that you could cut out some of the foam. I didn't want to risk messing up the foam, so my trick was just to pull the button really tight and in order to do so, I had to use yarn instead of thread. I needed to attach the yarn to something on the back side of the plywood so I used another trick I had read about - using chopsticks or bamboo skewers. I used 3 inch pieces of skewers to keep my yarn from pulling through the headboard. I attached the button to the front and threaded the yarn back through the drilled hole. After pulling tight, I wrapped that end of the yarn around the skewer and tied it off.

Here's the final product along with mirrors my brother gave me for Christmas. 

Trips to Hardware store - 1 (for staples)

(add that to the last post and this headboard took me 3 trips to hardware stores and 2 trips to fabric stores and I tracked down the foam at Ross... phew)