TRUE VALUE BLOG SQUAD CHALLANGE - A BED FIT FOR A KING! PART Trois!

Helllllooo pretty people! We have resolved to complete this massive bed project before 2010 is over, and we are here to present Part Three (or a happy little trois!). If you missed Part One or Part Duce, check them out for a refresh. If you feel like staying put, here is a quicky break down of where we are up to. We bought our supplies, build our frame, stained the feet, and upholstered the sides and foot of the bed. Today we will share...drum roll please....the almighty headboard! Got it? Great, let's go!

The headboard required a small army because of it's massive size and weight. This time we were lucky enough to have some family and friends in town, so we put them to work, stat!

So here is how we upholstered the bed, before we get to the tufting (which is hard work, let us tell ya!). 

You will need:

Foam

Batting

Spray Glue (one-two cans)

Gorilla Glue (just a little)

The headboard you built from wood

Fabric

Buttons (we made our own from the upholstery fabric using a kit from here)

Upholstery Thread & Needle

Staple Gun

Rubber Hammer

Sharpie

Scissors

Drill

You can find everything at True Value except the batting, fabric, and upholster thread!

 

First you are going to attach your foam to the front of the headboard you built. Make sure if you are tufting you pre-drilled holes before you glue the foam to the headboard. We found spray glue is way easier to use and works great! The Gorilla glue is pretty great too, but you have to account for more drying time. We used the Gorilla glue to make sure corners of the foam were super flat on the surface of the wood. 

Once you have a super secure (no sagging!) base to work with you can start batting. We loved the cotton based batting. It's 80% cotton and 20% polyester. We bought two "Queen Size" rolls to cover the foam three (yes, three) times. We were paranoid the greem foam would peek through our light fabric, so we played it safe.  

We think the trick to having the professional look when upholstering is clean straight lines from the start. We smooth out the matting several times before stapling it. We hammered loose staples to keep the smoothness going.

We didn't sew any of the fabric except to piece it together. Instead we stapled it tightly to the wood, and folded the corners like you see below. Easy peasy.

Tufting is what we were initially scared to do, but it wasn't so bad! Granted it's a good idea to have an extra pair (or two) of friendly hands to help and steady the bed as you work with the needle and thread to make sure the buttons are perfectly placed. We had to push the buttons against the foam really hard and secure the thread with staples from the staple gun. Want to see our genius mess?

As you can see we made a bit of a crazy mess with super glue and staples to keep the upholstery thread secure in the back of the bed. Thank god this will be covered up (more on that next post!)

Speaking of our next and final bed post, check out how close we are to sharing the final product!

Have you made a bed? Know a great project about bed building? Please share! We are kinda obsessed with how affordable it is compared to buying. 

Lets get legal: We were one of the 10 bloggers True Value has chosen to work on The Blog Squad , and we are way excited to take on the challenge of showing you exciting DIY projects.  They have compensated us for our time and writing, and provided materials for the projects we have worked on. However, our opinions are entirely our own and we have not been paid to publish positive comments. Did we mention we are excited to show you our DIY Blog Squad Projects

Table Flipping at it's Finest

Joey hard at work in his man cave

A few weeks back, Joey and I headed over to Build it Green in Queens. We packed ourselves up in the mini-van and took a 15 mile road trip south to explore and learn about What BIG had to offer. When we entered, we were instantly overwhelmed by it's massive size and selection (about 5,000 doors, anyone?). After snooping around and planning a million and a half new DIY Projects, we calmed down, and found the wood, hidden way in the back, behind the building, sat down, and decided exactly what we were going to do next.

This wood looks like it came from a mill and had the charm we wanted to add to our foyer. We really searched far and wide for a long, high table with no luck, hence we DIYed ourselves through our own. Here is what we did, how we did it, and what it cost:

DIY Table Check List:

9 ft piece of wood - $20

7 ft piece of wood for legs - $20

"L" shape welders metal - $6

 2, 2 ft Pipe - $20 ($10 each)

"decorative" metal pipe brackets AKA floor flanges - $16 (for 4)

Minwax Finishing Wax Paste - $13

Wood Screws - $10 for a huge pack #8 1 inch screws and #8 1 1/2 inch screws

Total for 84 inch custom table: $105

 Most of the labor involved was sanding the old wood down to a state of beauty and smoothness. Joey spent hours upon hours with a hand sander getting the wood smooth and removing unattractive oddities. This part is so important for a smooth to touch and professional look. This took hours upon hours and many resporators until we found a professional grade one we were happy with. Check out Joey sporting his new look (notice the new hair cut we DIYed too?!).

After the wood was cut to size and sanded, we took the Minwax paste and rubbed it on all the wood (table top and legs all around) to give it that super professional feel. While it dried, we proceeded to prep the hardware.

 Joey Custom Making "L" Brackets

We scoured the hardware store for quite a while and could not find "L" brackets with an old-world and worn feel. We decided to make our own. In the welding section we found these long "L" shaped bars Joey turned into custom brackets. They had the finish we wanted on them, it was simply about custom sizing them and poking some holes for the 1 inch screws to go through.

It's hard to tell in the photo, but they have this weathered feel to them. The brackets are hidden in our design, but when we do something, we want to stay true, through and through.

We also snagged up some weathered looking pipes to give the table support in the middle because it was a bit tall, 34 inches to be exact. We wanted to add a little architectural interest with the hardware so we picked up four floor flanges to screw the pipes into instead of just running the pipes through the legs.

We attached the legs with the pipes after the finished dried and brought the finished legs and table top upstairs separately to attached them in the hallway. This was a rather large piece of furniture, so we assembled it this way to avoid it not fitting in a door or up the stairs. The 1 1/2 inch screws were used to attach the table top to the legs.

This is what we did Halloween night! Not a single trick-or-treater in sight (and a pound of candy I now have to deal with). We are super excited and proud of our new piece and are inspired to use this wood in my office for custom shelves, and we can't wait to show you. We would have spent about $1,000 on a piece like this, so it feels good to get exactly what we want for just over $100.

Here she is in all her glory:

Have you done a custom piece you are in love with? Please share, we would love to know what you did and how it turned out!

We are on a mission to build a bed

It's easy for us to fall in love with very expensive furniture. It seems once we finally decide on something and fall in love with it, we review the price tag and get that knot in our stomach. "Yes, that bed!" we'll say, then we will look at the $4,000 price tag, think about the cost of tax and shipping and buying a new mattress, and get queezy at the thought of throwing down $7,000 on a bed. Yes! A bed is one of those things you should splurge on, but $7,000 can get us a heck of a vacation, or that new car we need so bad. We love the beds above, and we 100% agree that's the style of bed we want. The first one is from Jayson Home and Garden (of course!), and runs $3,750 before the required additions. The second is from Restoration Hardware and is a bit cheaper coming in at $2,965. The third is made by a company called Hickory White (they have great stuff) and is the most expensive, but we can not disclose the price online. What to do, what to do....

Why, build a bed of course. We decided we are in a position where we must be aggressive. We have a lot of out of town guests coming and we NEED the bed in 'sleep ready' condition (so we can move our Queen into an empty guest room) ASAP. So we crunched some numbers, made some sketches, and here is what we came up with:

Bed Feet: $48 Home Depot

Fabric: $250 Vintage French Linen from various sources

Nail Heads: $30 Amazon (you can find in our store!)

Jig-saw: $70 Home Depot

Hardware: $50 Home Depot

Wood for Frame: $50 Home Depot

Super Think Plywood: $50 Home Depot

That brings us to a grand total of $548 + a lot of labor. A lot more realistic!

We will be posting a step by step guide of what we did, and how you can do it too! Wish us luck!