I spent ALL weekend working on the headboard.

Literally Friday night, from 8am-6:30pm Saturday, from 10:30am-12:00am Sunday.

The headboard is basically 2 different pieces that will fit together – the frame & the upholstery. The frame needed significant modifications and the wood backer for the upholstery needed to be cut to fit in the frame. Friday, I started to modify the frame and cut out the pegboard for the upholstery. I quickly realized I did not have the right tools for the job. I bought a jigsaw when we very first moved into the apartment but over the last 3 years, it’s disappeared. We didn’t move it to the house and for the life of me I have no idea where it went. Luckily it pretty cheap {$30ish}, so it’s not a huge loss.

Saturday began with an early morning, unsupervised trip to Home Depot. Danger, Will Robinson. Danger. I came with some supplies {wood, screws, etc} & a few new toys!

• Scrolling jig-saw {why buy a fixed blade when it can scroll?!! least expensive one in the store but the laser doesn’t seem to be aligned properly}
• Electric staple gun {upgrade!}
• Cheap cordless jig-saw-like thing from Black & Decker that was on clearance for $19 {I’ve since used it & merely say, “Meh. Not great but it’s really light might come in handy for something.”}
• Pair of lightweight saw horses {Finally a work surface other than the floor & back porch railings! Lightweight means I can easily get them up & down the stairs, plus they were way cheaper than something more heavy-duty. So far so good.}
• Tool organizer/carrier {So my most used tools finally have an assigned seat that I can drag around the house. Running up & down the stairs every time I forget something is for the birds.}

The rest of Saturday was spent working on modifying the frame and making the wood backer for the tufted part. I knew the upholstery was going to take a while and succeeded in getting all the wood stuff done and ready to go Saturday. I felt victorious vacuuming up the sawdust in time to get ready to go out Saturday night.

Sunday was all soft-goods all day. Fabric, foam, batting, buttons. The prep work took significantly longer than any of the tufting. I’m still not done but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I have 4 more columns of tufts to do, then all the finishing upholstery.

I’ve never done diamond tufting before and referenced this post on apartment therapy several times. They say the stool project that’s featured is a “good starter project” because there’s only 10 buttons & 3 diamonds. “HA!” I say, “Ha!!” My headboard has 27 buttons and 14 whole diamonds {not including the half diamonds around the edges}. 

I guess I was never really one for “starter projects”. Heck, have you seen the house we bought?! I’m more of a “figure it out as you go” kinda DIYer. Why waste time with diddly projects when you can just jump right in?

While I’m not done, I can honestly say that the actual tufting isn’t that hard. What tripped me up the most was figuring out how to lay things out. With diamond tufting, you have to allow extra fabric for the part that goes down into each button, so you add 3″ in each direction. {I’ll explain exactly how I did it when I post my “How To”.}

Once I wrapped my brain around the scaling up of the pattern, I found that the height I needed was RIGHT.AT. width of the fabric. I repositioned the middle 2 columns 3 times before it was centered correctly on the fabric. 1″ higher or lower and I wouldn’t have enough fabric to wrap around the edges of the frame.

And I was trying to piece together 2 pieces of fabric! See I needed 2-2/3 yards fabric to tuft the headboard. I didn’t buy enough the first time {d’oh!} and when I went back to get more they only had 2 2-yard pieces left. It all worked out though. You’d never know it was 2 pieces if I hadn’t of told you.

So that – in a really long post – was my weekend. And if you got through this giant wall of text, consider THIS me planting a big sloppy wet kiss on your cheek. {isn’t that appealing?!}

How was your weekend?? Do anything fun?