Bookshelf Headboard

When we started redoing my daughter’s bedroom, we knew that we were getting rid of her daybed and switching to a full-size bed. And I had my mind set on turning the bed into an entire wall unit to fill up this awkward half-wall that she had with the sloped ceiling.

We ended up finding this full-size bookshelf headboard at Goodwill for $10 and I was tickled! I knew we could build off of this!

It was old-fashioned, but it was solid.

I started by sawing out the little spindles in these sliding doors. I just used a little hacksaw and got as close to the edge as I could and then sanded the rest of the way. My plan is to fill these in with a photo or printed paper down the road, but that just hasn’t happened yet.

Then we just started building our frame. We used all 1×10’s for our project.

I want to point out that I put the measurements of each piece in the pictures, but these measurements are really specific for the wall we were working with. We pretty much went as high as we could go and almost the exact width of the wall. Use your own space to determine your measurements, but this should serve as a solid guide for how to progress through the steps.

After we had the sides attached to the original headboard, we put a board across the top to square it off. Then added the long shelf in the middle.

For the sides, we attached our shelves to the main frame first.

I forgot to grab a picture of attaching the final sides, so just pretend like my black line is the outside board for the entire piece.

The final step was to add the 2 vertical pieces to break up the long shelf in the middle. I thought it looked better and it gave it more stability.

Once we had it all framed out, I attached some pieces of molding to the vertical pieces that we attached to the original headboard. This helped unify the two pieces together.

Then the whole thing got painted white…

and filled up quickly! Now she’s got tons of storage for baskets filled with hair supplies, CDs, scarves and more. Plus lots of room for her books that were previously just getting tossed onto the floor when she was done reading at night.

Not only is she pretty good at filling up the shelves, but the wall unit itself fills up this wall perfectly!

It’s like it was made for it! Oh wait… it was!!

To see where this room started, you have to check out the before/after post! Here’s a not so lovely before shot:

We also made her a Murphy Desk to help with her clutter issues!

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