How To Build An Eco Friendly Headboard From An Old Door

Looking for a simple headboard DIY that you don’t need a team of craftspeople to build? Then learn how easy it is to repurpose an old door into a headboard!

REPURPOSE OLD DOOR INTO HEADBOARD:

Hey everyone, this is my first attempt at blogging, and it shows due to my lack of pictures of the process. Regardless, I hope that you find this blog helpful in putting together your own recycled door headboard. You can find the instructions here and if you are unable to download it from the link just contact us at [email protected] and we can email it to you directly. Please let me know if I can answer any questions if you are thinking about building your own headboard or need some help along the way. Good luck and happy building!

We had been looking for headboards for both our guest bedroom and our master bedroom for quite a while. Beth loves catalogs like Pottery Barn and we both like antiques, but we aren’t crazy about paying the sometimes ridiculous prices. Beth found a headboard on Pinterest several months ago, and after looking at the Anna White Queen Headboard plans that the original poster used we headed out to a local salvage yard to find some reclaimed wood. What we found was something even better (albeit a little more challenging), some solid doors with great distressing and character.

TIPS ON BUILDING YOUR HEADBOARD: 

Before I show you how to repurpose old doors into a headboard, I wanted to briefly share a few tips about choosing your door and building a headboard for your specific bed frame. This is because not all doors and bed frames are the same, and they both are a crucial part when it comes to building the headboard. Also, I wanted to share a tip about how to find doors for this project.

Tip 1: Look at your bed frame design: 

When it comes to beds, you might just think about it in terms of having a queen size bed or king size bed. Even though that information is important, you need to ask yourself do you have a metal bed frame, platform bed frame, wooden bed frame, or something else? 

Considering the type of bed frame you have may sound obvious, but it’s a detail that you can easily overlook. Knowing how your bed frame is designed can help you to build a headboard that works perfectly with your bed. Plus, you may need to make a few adjustments to our instructions if your bed frame has a modern design.

Tip 2: Decide what style of headboard you want to build: 

Are you wanting to make a modern headboard, an elegant headboard, a chic headboard, or a natural headboard? Knowing what headboard style you want to build can help you pick out a door. For example, if you want a modern headboard then you may want to go with a door made of dark wood, or if you want a natural headboard, then you may want a door that has a classic design.

Tip 3: Make sure you have enough space to build the headboard: 

Again this tip may sound a bit obvious, but a door can be a very large item (especially if you are making a king size headboard). Due to that, I would recommend working in a nice spacious area vs a small space. This is because you will have to clean the door, build the frame, paint, etc.

For this project, I built the frame inside my workshop and then painted it outside in our backyard.

Tip 4: Shop around for your doors:

Once you have figured out tips 1-3, it’s time to go shopping. When shopping for doors, you can check out places like thrift stores, salvage yards, and antique shops. Depending on the type of door you want, a vintage door, antique door, etc. will dictate where you should go shopping.

Tip 5: Look for a ”high quality” door: 

When I say ”high quality”, I am not saying that your door needs to be brand new and in perfect condition. However, since the door is going to be your new wooden headboard, I do believe that you should try to find the best one possible for your bed base.

When looking at doors I would consider the following:

• What type of wood is the door made out of (like walnut wood, poplar wood, etc.)?
• Does the door have any type of odd paint or coating on it? – Going the extra mile to check the original paint is always a good idea. In this case, I am referring to toxic finishes, harmful substances, or harsh chemicals (like lead paint). You can find tons of videos and blog posts about how to check vintage items for toxic substances or toxic chemicals. So, when in doubt, do a quick test to make sure that your door has a non-toxic finish.
• Is there any damage to the door? – When shopping, make sure you look at the bottom of the door, back of the door, and top of the door. A little damage is fine, but you don’t want to spend a large amount of time fixing the whole thing when your goal is to make a headboard.

HOW TO REPURPOSE OLD DOOR INTO HEADBOARD:

BUILDING HEADBOARD:

The first thing to do is build the headboard. 

After bringing the doors home, we cleaned them, cut them down to size (remember to see my instructions for detailed information and measurements for each step of the project), and then built the legs and cap around the door.

PAINTING HEADBOARD:

Once we built the solid wood frame, the next step was painting. Since these are headboards that are pressed against a wall I only painted the front-facing side. This is a good option if you want to make this a fast furniture build. Also, it was much easier and a big time saver because I could just lay it on the ground and paint one side.

For our guest room, I painted our queen headboard black because we were designing a modern bedroom. However, for our king headboard, we wanted to do something different since the room was going to have more farmhouse home decor.

Due to that, we wanted to retain some of the natural color and distressing of the door. So, I masked off the panels (to create a panel headboard) using painters tape and some of Beth’s scrapbooking cardstock. Using these inexpensive materials is a great way or creative way to give your headboard a more ”complex” look without spending tons of additional money and time.

Below are a few notes about paint that you might want to consider before doing this step. 

• If you are looking for spray painting recommendations for creating non-toxic bedroom furniture, a great choice is either Krylon or Rust-Oleum. 
• Chalk Paint would be a good paint option if you have it on hand. 
• You may need to add several coats of paint depending on the details of your door and how it’s made.

MOUNTING HEADBOARD:

After the paint dried it was simply a matter of mounting the headboard to the bed frame. For us, I was able to attach the headboard to the bed frame by drilling holes in the legs that match up with the bed frame. Then I inserted bolts and attach the nuts. However, depending on the type of ”bed furniture brand” that you own, you may need to make a few adjustments like drilling more holes/using extra bolts.

Once everything was attached, we had some beautiful new headboards for a fraction of the price we would have paid for buying one.

When looking at each headboard. it’s amazing to think that they were both made from a salvaged door.

Thanks for checking out my first blog post, I look forward to your comments or questions. I hope you enjoy building your own headboard! Check out a few more of our favorite furniture projects below. –Don

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ANOTHER DIY HOME FURNISHING PROJECT? THEN CHECK OUT OUR DRAFTING TABLE MAKEOVER!