How to Build a Headboard with built-in Floating Nightstands

Whew. That's a mouthful. For Max's room, since I didn't put trim around his room, I still wanted to have a cool accent or feature. Initially I wanted to cover one whole wall with wood to have a really beautiful accent wall, but I quickly let that dream die... or rather change into this headboard idea...

Here's is what his room looks like all painted with his bed in there...

It looks fine.. it's just nothing special... I really wanted something more substantial and I really want to throw those side tables IN THE TRASH. I made them lots of years ago, and they have truly seen better days...

Here's what his room looks like now...

I still need to stain the headboard and the nightstands a nice warm, dark brown... but this is much better!! I also swapped out that quilt on his bed for something more neutral...

Here's how I got to this point...

First, I measured how large I wanted the headboard to be. It came to be about 60" tall. I knew I wanted it to extend all the way to the baseboard, and I knew I wanted it attached to the wall. I figured since 60" was a good height because that meant I could buy five 12" boards and simplify my life. 

Now, my children have queen sized beds... it's ridiculous I know, but to be fair, where we live, it was cheaper for us to buy a queen size bed than it was to buy them twins... I have no idea, that's just how it worked out.

Anywho, this is a queen size bed, and I knew I wanted the night stands attached to the headboard so I needed it to be wider than the bed. I figured that 8 feet would be a good width. That also meant that I could get away with buying 1x12x8 boards. Again, simplifying the project.

I don't have a lot of pictures of this process... I forgot.. Boo.

But I found the center of the wall and started attaching the boards. There are some electrical sockets on this wall that I need to make sure were uncovered. It was easy because they came to the edge of the bottom board. I just measured where they went, and then cut out the rectangles with my jigsaw. See below...

Here's how it should fit after you cut out the rectangle. Hopefully you did better than me and you don't have one wobbly line. Stupid saw.

I made sure to screw the wood into studs so that it would be super secure and wouldn't fall on my little toddler during the night...

I put lots of screws in each board and then added a simple corner molding so that you couldn't see the raw edge of my 1x12x8 boards...

I cut the corners of the molding to 45 degrees... so that it would look nice and pretty!

I nailed on that trim with an old fashioned hammer and nails. If I had an air compressor and a nail gun, I would have used that... but I don't, so I didn't. This worked just fine.

It looked like this when I was done with that part...

It stayed like that for a couple days until I made it back to Lowe's to grab the rest of the stuff I needed.

Now... the floating nightstands are SUPER easy. I picked up a pine stair tread (weird, I know - the worker at Lowe's thought so too), and 4 metal decorative shelving brackets.

Let me explain the stair tread.... the front of stair treads are rounded.. plus the color of the wood matched the wood I had already bought for the rest of the headboard. Those are the only two reasons why I bought it. Well, those and the fact that it was cheap.

I measured from the sides how wide I could make my nightstand shelf and still have room for the bed to fit in the middle with some extra space between the nightstand and the bed. I don't want anybody rolling over and hitting their head on the nightstand.

I cut down the stair tread, attached the brackets and then attached it to the headboard at the right height. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

It probably looks more complicated than it actually was...

See the nice rounded front??

I also decided that since lamps were probably going to be sitting on these nightstands, I wanted to cut a hole so that the cord could go through the nightstand....

Exhibit A:

I just used my drill and a drill bit made for drilling holes and I drilled a hole. How many times can I say drill in one sentence??

That's basically it! Easier than it looks! I think I want to put some cute wire baskets under the nightstands too... but that means I have to go to a store and find them... which means I need to go out of town because I live in the middle-of-nowhere-Maine where there are not stores besides Lowe's and Walmart :)
Now all that's left is to stain it, and maybe put a few coats of polyurethane on it... we shall see.

xoxo
Hailey