The Story of a Footboard

Right after our wedding and honeymoon eleven happy years ago, we moved into our first house together and slept on a twin mattress on the floor together because that’s all we had.  I still wouldn’t mind sleeping on a twin mattress with Anthony but I doubt it would be as comfortable now as it was then, with the high probability of a toddler sandwiched between us.  A couple of weeks passed during which we were on the hunt for a queen bed and mattress and that hunt ended with a bed/dresser set we found at a local thrift store in Ohio.  We bought our dining room table and chairs at the same time and paid $100 for one set and $150 for the other.  I can’t remember which was which.  Then we bought a mattress at Big Lots for $500 and finally cashed in on adult status. 

We painted our master in our first house pale blue and then I got to work adding some white – curtains from Walmart, lamps from a clearance rack at Ollie’s, and bedding that was wedding gifted.  It was simple and serene and perfect for us newlyweds.

Later, we sold our first little house and moved down south into our second where we, once again, went pale blue in our bedroom.  We carried the same furniture set with us only, this time around our headboard got retrofitted with a custom, tufted headboard and the spindles came off the footboard of the bed – a simple twist and unscrew ordeal.

The plan after making the headboard was to somehow pad and upholster the footboard to match but, as things do, that got pushed to the back burner.

After being moved two more times, our original bedframe is still watching us fall asleep at night.  After we painted the green accent wall a few weeks ago though, we did a quick presto-chango with the footboard…again.

Since we had to move the bed away from the wall for a hot sec to paint and that meant taking off the footboard to move it, Anthony made a quick jaunt to Lowe’s for a 1 x 3 board and a sample pot of paint I matched to the gray of the headboard.  (This was right after we got under contract on our new house and so I think the motivation and excitedness of another big DIY project was eating at us and had to be quenched with a small project at hand.  Enter a footboard.  Haha!)

When he got home he took footboard outside and sawed off the posts so that they were flush with that board across the middle.  Then he cut the new 1 x 3 board to size (about an inch longer than the width of the headboard) with his circular saw*, nailed it on top, and filled in the nail holes with some wood filler.  I gave the whole thing a quick sanding with our trusty hand sander*, primed, and painted. 

And now we have a footboard that’s a much better counterpart to our headboard all for under $10.

I would still love to upholster it somehow with the gray fabric of the headboard but for now, at least we’re in matching territory.

In the photo below, the light from the window is really bouncing off the satin paint (should’ve probably gone flat) so the gray footboard looks a lot lighter than the headboard but in real life, they match pretty darn well. 

I really like the look of our duvet just falling over the edges of the bed vs. being stuck behind posts.  It’s much more casual and I like casual.  :)

Just ask my closet.

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