Tutorial : headboard recover

We need an office space in our house. AAAAnd we don't have the room. So we decided to get a Murphy bed so we could move things around between our work-out room and our guest room and end up with enough space for a little desk. You know, the beds that fold down from the wall... We managed to find a great deal on one on kijiji.ca, but it was 20+ years old and needed a face lift. The frame had some rust spots, so a wire brush and some paint took care of that quite nicely (it's drying as I write this), but the headboard was another story...


As you can see... dated and damaged. We decided paint wouldn't cut it, so we covered it in fabric. Here's the basic steps..
Materials
-headboard (you could make one if you wanted)
-staple gun and lots of long staples (I used at least 2 rows)
-fabric (I got 1.5 m of 150cm wide, but adjust as needed)
-quilt batting (I did 3x thickness, but 2 would have been lots.)
-scissors

1) choosing fabric. This was possibly the hardest part. There were lots of fabrics I loved, but they wouldn't have been suitable for a first time. I avoided anything with lots of stripes and bold patterns because they would show too badly if I ended up a little crooked. It also had to be fairly tough to be able to stand up to being pulled and tugged during the covering process. And I wanted it to complement a beautiful quilt we were recently given that I intend to use on this bed. Make sure to buy enough extra to go around the edges. I lucked out and found one on clearance!

2) prep the head board. If you have an old one like I did, clean it up. pull staples, give it a good wash or two, glue loose bits down, paint legs if desired. Remember that you won't be able to clean it after, so do it now.

The frame's in the background!

3) Put the quilt batting on. I'm pretty sure this could be combined with the cover, but I didn't feel comfortable doing so. Leave the corners for last and start at the top, then bottom, then one side and the other side. Make sure you pull it very snug and staple on the back. For the top corners, just cut a wedge out so it's reasonably flat when you pull it around and staple it down. To go around the legs, cut straight across from the front to the back and staple away.



(my helper!)

4) Put the fabric on.
a) To do the legs nicely, start at the bottom. Staple the bottom nice and snug. Now, flip the board over so the front is up. Cut a slit on the inside (both sides if your legs are more in the middle) of the leg from the bottom up to about where the leg meets the head board. You are going to fold the piece of fabric under so you have a clean edge. I flipped the entire piece of fabric down so I had lots of room to work in. Staple fabric (wrong side up) onto the leg, about where you want it to fold over, near the bottom of the headboard. Make sure to do the outside if your legs are on the edge! Flip the fabric back up and you won't see any staples! (Sorry, I forgot to take pics of this!)

b) Staple the sides. Make sure to pull tightly. Trim and arrange neatly the fabric around the legs before you staple down.



c) Staple the top. Nothing magical here... Pull tightly and staple. When doing the corners, expect to put in a couple of staples as you pull and arrange so it looks smooth.


d) cover the back (optional). Don't worry too much if your back looks like a mess, it's probably going against a wall anyway, so who's going to see it? If you've followed my steps, you probably have alot of fabric at the top. To cover the back, just fold the edges over, trim excess fabric and staple down. Pull it fairly snug as you go.



And there you go! New headboard for about $20 and a couple hours of time!