the headboard CH and I built

Wow… it’s been over a month since I blogged! So Sad!

In previous instances where I have randomly stopped blogging for a few days (or even a few weeks) I’ve always come back and posted about how “I’m alive” and “I’m so sorry for not posting”. In truth, I am sorry because I love blogging, but I can’t apologize anymore. Life gets busy and priorities shift and frankly, CH and I have made some of the best memories this past month (more on that later).  I’m still making time for myself these days, it just hasn’t come in the form of blogging lately. (Actually it’s been more like hand-lettering and graphic design.) But I haven’t given up blogging all together – oh, no, I probably have more to say than ever – I’m just relieving myself from the pressure of daily posting.

All that to say… last weekend we literally built one of my favorite memories in our marriage so far, our headboard.

Saturday around 1pm CH looked at me and said, ” Do you want to build something for the house?” (Music to my ears!) I had no idea exactly what he had in mind to “build” but we quickly decided on a headboard. (Our bedroom decor hasn’t exactly met my taste since we tied the knot and started living under one roof.) After about 10 minutes or less we came across this beautiful headboard made by Tim and Emily of Today’s Letters.

image found here

They get all the credit for basically the rest of this post because we followed their step by step instructions  with a few minor adjustments to create the beauty that is our headboard.

It started by screwing a two boards (1″x 2″ x 5′) into the wall to support the headboard. We wanted this process to be as minimally invasive to our walls as possible so CH created the support boards.

Cole says if he were to do it again he would use one board, just longer instead of two boards overlapping.

Meanwhile we stained the edges of the other boards so that when they were attached to the wall we wouldn’t have to try to stain them.

The stain we chose was Cabot Dark Walnut and we only did one coat because I loved the way the knots in the grain looked grey with the stain.

Next, we attached 3 boards (1″x 6″x8′) to the support boards.

This is where I stopped taking pictures and started working more, sorry.

I can say that the boards we used for the outside of the headboard are 1″x 12″x 8′ cut to 5′, and that we stopped for Pei Wei half way through.

The next morning we drilled the bed frame into the headboard…

and put the bed back together!

Originally, I had wanted to hang lights on either side of the bed  like this.  We already owned the shades and we purchased HEMMA cords and DIMMA dimmers from IKEA.

BUT we had a hard time attaching them to the ceiling and so I threw my light over the headboard to kinda get it out of the way – and I fell love with it like that.

CH and I have always dreamed of staying at the ACE Hotel and now I feel like we live there!

Again, we couldn’t have done it without the help from Today’s Letters.

-Michelle

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