Fence Post Headboard

When we bought our house nearly 2 years ago, it came with a great playground in back. At least, we thought it was great. Then we took a closer look and realized that it lacked a certain structural integrity that most parents would appreciate in a playground.

So we tore it down. This resulted in leftover wood for future projects and a bad case of poison ivy for me (I'll spare you the pictures). I had several ideas of what to do with the wood and I finally got to work on a project: guest bed headboard.


I picked out 10 good boards.

I sawed off the bottom of the boards to make them matching lengths and clean up the bottom a bit.

I thought I could use the Dremel to do the cutting, but the boards were just a little too thick so I had to do it with a trusty hand saw. It was rough going at first, but then I found a rhythm and sawed through all 10 boards without too much trouble.

I hand sanded the boards with coarse sandpaper.

There were two thicker boards that were the perfect length to be my crossbars to hold the whole thing together. I put two nails in each board at each crossbar. (I didn't get a picture of this.)

The boards all had nail holes from their play set days. Even though I was going for a shabby chic distressed look, I opted to fill them in since they were large and there were so many of them.

Then came painting time.

I gave it 2 1/2 coats. Here are pictures before distressing.

Since the boards were so old, they already had a great distressed look so I just needed to do a little sanding of the paint. This was actually incredibly easy. I used the hand sander with coarse sandpaper that I used to sand the boards in the first place. I'm pleased as punch at how this turned out.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but there is a difference before and after I sanded. It came out a nice shabby chic.

Here is the room before the headboard.

And after.

The hubby (who I kept in the dark about my project) loved it and is thankful some of the wood is finally out of our screened in patio. And I got it done just in time for my parents' visit this weekend.


In the end, I only spend $20.89 (not counting the doctor bills for the poison ivy).
Nails: $3.47
Hand sander: $4.98
60 grit sand paper: $3.47
Quart of paint: $8.97