A Day in Our Life: DIY Hollow Core Door Headboard

This post is especially for people who have limited options of where to put a bed without a headboard. We have a little conundrum in our bedroom because of the four walls: one houses our closet, two have windows, and the other would put our bed right in front of our door and is also the same wall I have a giant mirror hanging. I'm all for keeping things fresh in the romance department- but a mirror at the head of the bed is...awkward, just awkward. So that leaves the windowed walls...ugh. [Insert image of pillows falling behind the bed because you can't push the bed against the wall or the curtains will be squished.]

I just wanted something to make our bed look a little grander, our curtains squish-less, and to keep our pillows on top of the bed. Under our heads. Where they should be.

I remembered reading an article about all the different ways you can use hollow core doors in DIY magazine once, and Pinterest-ed it to see how others had transformed them into headboards. After some browsing, I just decided to wing it. I bought a door and some 1x4s, and a couple door jamb pieces that I planned to use as a kind of a border frame of sorts and jumped right in to my project.

Here's my door:

I measured the head end of the bed frame, between the parts that you would attach a headboard to. That section is slightly wider than the rest of the bed frame, I measured about 62.25 inches for our queen size bed. But don't take my word for it: Measure twice, cut once. Or in my opinion, measure at least 5 times!

This is where I measured between, but all the way between the outside edges, of the frame.

Here's my door after meeting my circular saw:


I have a pile of scrap wood sitting in our basement that I was able to pull a piece of 1x4 from and cut it to size to fill the gap. TIP: *Brush wood glue onto your filler piece before* you insert it in the space you are filling!** I had some fun trying to squeeze glue in there after the fact!

This is where I stopped. For about a week. I was stuck. I wanted the headboard to be high enough to lean against without having a board in my back, but not too high- our bedroom is no master suite, that would look ridiculous to have such a grand headboard. But I knew the door itself couldn't rest on the floor because that would be too low, and the 1x4's wouldn't support the door off the floor. Hmmm....

Then, one wintry weather day, we were released from school early and as soon as I looked at my mess I figured out how to make it work. I measured from the top edge of the bed frame to the floor, it was about 8 inches, but measure for yourself, of course. I decided I would use 2x4's (which I already had from a basement renovation) to create "legs" for the farthest sides of the door. I would cut two pieces of 2x4 to 42 inches long (the width of the door plus 8 inches). Then, I would cut two more pieces of 2x4 to 8 inches in length, these would be attached to the bottom of the 42 inch pieces, they support the door.

I also mitered one end of each 42 inch piece at a 45 degree angle. I didn't want to be able to see the 2x4 from the front of the headboard. I drilled pilot holes from top to bottom, then used a countersink bit to shave some wood away from each hole so that I could fill in over the screw heads with wood putty. I secured the suckers to the door with 2 3/4 inch wood screws, about 6 inches apart along the EDGE of the 2x4. Remember: it's a HOLLOW core door, and the frame of the door is the only thing that's solid. The small 2x4 went under the door and I attached that with 4 wood screws- one in each corner about an inch in from the edges.

It is important that you drill pilot holes before trying to attach screws, even if you don't drill countersink holes also. The pilot holes allow a path for the wood screws to grab the 2x4, and ensure the screw goes right where you need it to go. Without them, the screw will likely get stuck, go in crooked, or splinter your wood.

To attach the headboard to the frame of your bed you'll need to drill holes that match up with the bed frame. I used a page from a shopping list pad and lined up the top and side to the top and side of the bed frame, then I traced the spaces where you put screws through. I took the template downstairs, lined the top and side up to the part of the 2x4 that was just beneath the hollow core door and traced over the lines with a pen until marks showed through. I used the biggest drill bit I had to make large holes for my carriage bolts to fit through easily.

Adding the trim around the headboard was as easy as measuring, mitering, and attaching the pieces with my brad gun. The pieces I bought were already primed.

This is what it looked like before all the finishing touches.

I filled in all the holes made by the brad gun with wood putty and went over the gaps of the mitered seams, too. Then, I lightly sanded everything down (door, posts, and all) once the putty was dry. I didn't want gaps anywhere so I also piped some white silicone along all the seams where any wood had been put together and smoothed that out. I primed the whole thing with KILZ, and then went back and painted it white with some paint we already had on hand.

When it was dry I attached it to the bed frame using four carriage bolts, 8 washers, and 4 wing nuts (like this: insert carriage bolt through a washer from the back of the headboard and through the bed frame, secure with another washer and a wing nut; tighten securely).