Headboard

Add a little luxury to the bedroom with a French-style headboard, simply made from chipboard.

Note
The width of a standard singlebed headboard is 910mm, one for a three-quarter bed is 1 070mm, for double it is 1 370mm, queen 1 520mm and king 1 830mm.

You will need
• 16mm chipboard
• paper, pencil and eraser
• long ruler
• graph paper
• black marker
• jigsaw with a wood blade
• router with a roundover bit (usually used for table edges)
• wood glue
• 30mm nails
• hammer
• black PVA paint
• white PVA paint
• paintbrush
• coarse sandpaper

To make
1 First design your headboard. Fold a sheet of paper in half and sketch one side of the headboard with the tip of the headboard ending on the fold of the paper. When you are satisfied with the design, go over the pencil lines with a black marker. Now turn the folded paper over and use the marker to go over the lines that show through from the other side. When you open the paper you will have a complete template for your headboard, with two halves that are mirror images of each other. Transfer the design to graph paper.

2 Work out the size of your actual headboard, going according to the size of the bed. Divide this measurement by the number of blocks that the template covers on the graph paper, for the width and the height, so that you can work out how many centimetres each block represents: for example, one block = 20cm. Using your long ruler and a pencil, draw blocks of this size (20cm) on the chipboard. Now you are ready to transfer the design to the chipboard.

3 Refer to the graph paper template and draw the design block by block onto the chipboard, first with a pencil and then with the black marker. Draw the sections that are to stand out onto chipboard – these will be cut away later.

4 Use your jigsaw to cut the headboard out along the border lines, but first cut the shape a little distance outside the line. Then cut vertical notches to the line (it makes the sawing easier) and cut the headboard out neatly. Also cut out the raised pieces.

5 Smooth off the outer edge of the headboard using a router with a roundover bit.

6 Glue the raised pieces in place, nail them to secure and smooth off the edges with the router.

7 Paint the completed headboard with black PVA paint and leave it to dry.

8 Paint over it with white PVA, leave to dry and repeat until the black paint has been completely covered.

9 Now take coarse sandpaper and rub gently over the edges of the headboard to create an antiqued effect. Rub just hard enough for the black paint to show through here and there. Stand back every so often to check on your progress. Brush the dust off with a dry paintbrush when you are finished.

10 Screw the headboard to the bed or to the wall behind the bed. Or just let it lean against the wall if you prefer.