Trash to Treasure....Antique headboard bench!

I'm writing this on Sunday night.  I'm so excited that I just have to post this for you to read first thing on Monday morning!  I have a meeting at 9am, and this couldn't wait til afternoon!!!

The Hubs had a meeting tonight so I put the kiddos to bed and just finished sewing a pillow a little bit ago.  I'm now happily perched on my bed with jammies on, 27 Dresses on the TV (fab-o movie if you need a great chick flick), a handful of Cabury chocolate eggs (the little ones with the crunchy shells), and my computer chocked full of pictures of my latest project just for you!!

It's time to reveal the antique headboard I converted into a bench!  Just have to warn you...there are ALOT of pictures.  I documented how we did it to show you in case you happen to score a cool headboard and need to do something with it other than attach it to the end of a mattress!

 <-----This is the before on the left.  Had been in someone's barn for ages and then in our garage for probably 6 months...filthy, but full of potential!

Below is my big helper and me.  We sanded the headboard down a little to reveal some of the layers of paint, and then we cleaned it off really well.

Above on the right, are the 2 pieces of wood (1x8, and 1x10) for the seat that I stained using MinWax walnut stain.  Below is the frame that I made for the seat.  The Hubs cut the first piece that fit along the back between the posts, and then I measured, cut, and screwed the rest of the inner part of the frame together.  Then I pre-drilled holes into the legs and attached them to the outside of the frame.  We put a piece of 1x3 along the front to give a bit more stability and make the legs look flush along the front.

Because of how I had to attach the legs on the outside of the frame, The Hubs cut a couple of little blocks to mount the 1x3 along the outside and make the leg look flush with the side again.

 Tid Bit had been wanting to paint this thing for a week, so finally he got his chance.  The headboard had layers of paint, so we had to do our best to replicate that layering.  First we stained the wood, then painted green (Sherwin Williams Tansy Green to be exact), then a coat of cream (don't know the exact color because it was just $2.50 in the reject section at Lowes, but was perfect), and then finally the taupe-greenish-gray color.  The closest match I could find was Benjamin Moore Sag Harbor Gray, but I didn't have that.  So... I mixed some Benjamin Moore Nantucket Gray with some yellow, and black, and brown and got a color that was actually an even closer match!  Hooray for a genepool that passed on an ability for precision color mixing!

<----So here it is up close...it was still wet in this picture, so the color does look a little off.  Trust me, it's just right!  Remember the giant gouge that was in the top of the headboard too...yeah, I painted over that as well!  All it needed now was to dry and then be sanded down to show all those beautiful layers that Tid Bit so carefully painted!

Ok...so see below!  Sanded down a bit to make the new part look old too!  I think it turned out pretty smashingly!

When I started looking at it all done and pretty, I decided that it needed a little something cushy!  The other day I was thinking of upholstering the back, then I thought of upholstering the seat, then I decided I liked it so much just like this, but I now had a dropcloth that I'd washed and dried to do something amazing with...so I made pillows!  And because I didn't want to spend more on a monogram than I did on a 4x12 length of dropcloth, I decided to create a stencil and paint our initial onto the pillows!

First I found a "W" in a font that I liked and blew it up to be ginormous on a regular sheet of printed paper. Then I traced it onto a sheet of heavy duty stencil paper and cut it out.  I made sure to leave some points of connection for the inner pieces that would have fallen out otherwise.  I used spray on stencil adhesive to get the stencil to adhere to the fabric to make clean lines.  To apply the W,  I used a round paintbrush and dabbed some bronze paint onto the stencil.

See how there are some breaks in the W?  That was from the connection points that I didn't cut out.  No worries though, I just used a small detail brush to fill those areas in!  And below you can see the finished stencil!

I didn't do a tutorial on how to make a pillow.  I figured I'd taken enough pictures today and honestly, there are a million pillow tutorials out there!  If you really want me to do one sometime though, I will, but you will have to comment and say so!

So here it is...the bench AND the pillow!  In fact, I actually made 2 pillows, but need an insert for the other one...so hopefully you can get the jist with only one!

So that's it!  I'm pretty pleased with it!  Now all I have to do is decide where in my house I'm actually going to put this beauty!  Happy Monday!

- Logan

For more fun craft ideas, check out my new friend Beth's blog here!