Shiplap Headboard

My daughter and her boyfriend have been redecorating their bedroom…well she’s redecorating, he’s just a great guy that knows making her happy is important, we love him for this! In her quest to redecorate she had been struggling to find a new bed that matched her boho/farmhouse style and would also match the dressers and nightstands she had already purchased. She was wanting something big enough to accommodate their king size bed but not too big that she couldn’t showcase artwork above the bed. So mom and stepdad to the rescue! We told them we had no problem making it for them…but they had to help out!

Don’t mind the messy garage in the background! Here they are assembling!

We decided to make the headboard using pine 8 inch shiplap and pine 1 x 4’s. We cut the shiplap to the length she wanted (84 1/2 inches) this size would give them about 4 1/2 inches of overhang on each side. Then for height she wanted approximately 4 feet up from the top of her bed frame, due to the width of the shiplap and wanting to keep all of the boards the same we ended up being between 47 and 48 inches tall which still worked out perfectly. As you can see we put them to work! They both got to use the miter saw for the first time, which is always a fun experience! Not shown are pics of the staining trial and errors, trying to match a non wood surface was not easy, but we got as close as we could! We stained all of the boards before assembling using an Antique White base stain and Jacobean stain on top with several coats. We attached the shiplap to the 1 x 4’s from the back so there wouldn’t be any screw holes to fill.

As you can see in the picture we had some boards that didn’t want to go together like we wanted them to… so out came the ratchet straps…we have since bought some large clamps to do the job in the future. We used nickels to create the “nickel” gap in the shiplap. After the shiplap boards were attached to the 1 x 4’s we cut off the excess board at the bottom with our Rockwell saw…definitely a great investment, it works perfectly for smaller cuts! To hang this on the wall we used a metal french cleat with a weight limit of 300 pounds, more than enough to properly secure it to the wall. We ended up adding another piece of wood to the center on the back to attach the french cleat to. We had a lot of fun doing this project with them and we are so happy they love how it came out!