Happy long weekend everyone!!  I can’t wait for lots of fun in the sun this weekend.  And fun in Katie’s garage working on my NEW DRESSER that I finally found!!!  It’s actually my boss’ dresser that she is getting rid of.

The big question is WHAT COLOR DO I PAINT IT???

Gray?

White?

This color?

Printed?

I really like these two colors together:

Remember, my headboard looks like this:

I no longer have that bedspread on my bed.  I currently have a printed quilt that is white with “the tree of life” which is brown, yellow, blue, green…basically every color.  I also bought a really dark gray duvet cover at a garage sale.  People, I need your HELP!    You can check out more pins with bright yellow in it on my bedroom board.  Any and all opinions would be awesome.

I’m also buying her couch as well and (hopefully) selling mine today.  It’s kind of sad to be parting with the floral print couch (seriously…I’m quite fond of it) but my new couch is a solid off white color so I’ll be able to incorporate other fun colors into the mix.

Moving on…this weekend I’m also going to get lots of runs in this weekend…hopefully work on my sweet runner’s tan of sports bra back and a killer shorts line.  I’ve been thinking about getting one of those bracelets with my name and an emergency contact but I think these could be even better:

except instead of “lost” I would put “passed out”, “hurt”, “dehydrated” or “dead”.  Maybe I should get ones that say “If you are hot, single, between 27-35 and you love Jesus please call…”.  Now that sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?  Although I’d have to put Katie’s number so she can screen them for me.

To leave you laughing on this lovely Friday, here is a joke that Matea says all the time.

Confession.  I didn’t get it for about 5 minutes until Aaron explained it to me.  Oops.

In case you missed Part 1 of the DIY headboard check it out here.

We left off where the fun actually started.  After lunch Aaron and I headed out to the hardware store to pick up some paint and other items in which I have no idea why they were necessary (you know, like hinges, bolts, washers, wing nuts and 2×4′s).

As you recall, I initially wanted a headboard like this:

But when Aaron explained his idea of the doors I had images of bright chevron patterns flying in my head.  One dresser that I had pinned awhile back (and blogged about here) initially came to mind.  I could make this headboard look like that dresser.

{image via design sponge}

We ended up going to 2 different stores because the first one didn’t carry the shade of yellow spray paint I was looking for in matte.  Of course, neither did the 2nd one so we ended up getting a quart of regular paint in the exact shade I wanted…fuzzy navel.  Doesn’t that name sound delicious (?!).

While at the store Aaron proceeded to have conversations with me about things such as 2 or 3 hinges.  It went something like this:

Aaron:  So Jen, what do you think…should we get 2 or 3 hinges?

Jen:  Ummm (in my head I’m thinking, “I don’t even understand why we are getting hinges…can’t we just hot glue the 2 door parts together?”)

Aaron: This project is going to end up amazing and we want it to last through multiple moves (he knows me very well) so I think 3 hinges is the way to go in order for it to last the longest.

Jen:  Ummm….I agree.  (still clueless as to why we’re talking about hinges…)

Aaron: On the other hand, the dimensions of the doors and the force it will cause on 2 hinges won’t be enough for it to come apart especially if we’re careful with it.

Jen:  Yes.  (while thinking “You’re building this thing in the first place I’m pretty sure you could fix it if it broke.  And I still don’t get the hinge aspect.”)

Aaron:  Alright, good call, 2 hinges it is.  We’ll be just fine with 2.

This is how most of our conversations went throughout the evening.  Aaron would be talking dimensions, getting rulers out, doing calculations while Katie and I stood around clueless as to what he was talking about.  We decided by the end of it that had it been just Katie and me working on this project we would have barely gotten the 2 doors home (after buying the wrong ones), cutting one of them up and then quitting because it looked horrendous.  We’re thankful Aaron was around to lead the way on this DIY project.

We don’t really have any good before pictures of the doors (I know, we’re bad bloggers) and this isn’t even the door we bought but it is the same style.  Work with us.

Alright, when we got home we cut the doors.  I was actually inside on the internet looking up exactly how to paint a chevron pattern (which is way harder than it sounds AND nobody really has a good way of doing it…including us as you’ll soon see).  Basically Aaron just cut the bottom part of the door in order to keep the top panel and enough to connect legs to it.  I’m sure it was very difficult and he looked very manly doing it.

After this step, you tape off your chevron pattern in order to paint.  We had found a blog that said to make a grid and tape according to the grid.  (For that project they did one inch by one inch sections and made a small chevron pattern.)  We wanted a larger pattern so a. it had more pop and b. it didn’t take us 24 hours to tape down one section.

We initially made a grid 2 inches by 2 inches.  When it was all laid out we realized we had like 1/4 of an inch at the top and that would look stupid so we cleaned that grid off and started over.  This time Aaron took the dimensions and divided by 6 since we wanted about 6 lines of each color (or so we thought…).  We drew it all out and got to taping.

As you can see by our tape measure and mark we measured out 3 1/8 inches.  Very precise.

The first row worked like a charm.  Basically.

The second row sucked.  Our grid no longer worked and we had no clue what we were doing.  If we kept with the grid our yellow rows would be teeny tiny or if we skipped a line it would be huge.  We had to improvise.

We decided if we went about 2.5 inches and a little more (we know, very precise) than it would be perfect.  So we just marked the peak and valley of each row on our original grid to keep them in line and increased by 2.5 and a little more.  (Is this even making sense??)

When we finally  got it all taped out, we measured the distance of each peaks height and width to make a better grid for the second one.  This one included just the spots where the peaks would hit (in hind sight we should have done both the peaks and valley but we realized that after the first one had been painted so it was too hard to measure).

Before painting it we cleaned off all of our grid  lines since our yellow wouldn’t necessarily cover that up.  (Ok, I just lied.  We actually started painting, realized we wouldn’t be able to paint over them and proceeded to rub off the paint in order to “erase” the lines.  It actually worked.  We continued painting.)

Katie made some coffee, we finished one coat, drank some coffee, ate some of Katie’s leftover birthday dessert, stared at the paint drying, painted a second coat, drank some more coffee, stared at the wet paint, drank some more coffee, attempted to take some tape off before realizing it wasn’t dry yet, drank some more coffee and finally found the doors dry and ready to be finished.  (During this step we also painted the 2 2x4s that are used for the legs.  And drank coffee.  Did we mention that already?)

We also got paint on my new TOMs.  Tear.

We took of the tape to reveal our chevron pattern.  It was pretty much amazing except for the fact that wherever we had taken the tape off the door and put it back on the seal hadn’t been 100% tight so a bit of paint had soaked through.

I was really nervous for this step.

If you do this yourself, tear off a new piece of tape if you remove one.  You may think we’re being crazy and wasteful but trust us, your crisp clean lines will show up way better if you use a fresh piece of tape for each line.

Look at the concentration…

It is by no means bad but the first door especially has a few areas where you can totally see where the paint soaked through.  Luckily, Katie’s and my motto is “Good Enough” so we moved on with the next step.

The next step is where the hinges come to play.  We flipped the door over, lined them up and Aaron screwed in the hinges.  Of course I matched up the tops to be “perfectly in line” and of course they weren’t so out came the saw so Aaron could perfect it.  We like having him around.

When they were all perfect he showed me the reason behind the hinges.  It was like the heavens shown down on the doors and the angels sang.  It folds perfectly in half for easy moving.  Seriously genius.  This is why we did an arranged marriage for Katie so Aaron could be his genius self with our DIY projects.  Perfect.

At this point there was really nothing else for us to do so we called it a night.  11:30pm was a bit late for us anyhow so I headed home and Katie and Aaron headed to bed.

The next day Katie and Aaron came over to finish.  First we cleaned off the grid lines after allowing the paint to completely dry.  Next, Aaron measured exactly where the headboard should hit above the mattress.  He cut the legs screwed them into the doors.  He actually did this twice with a shorter board that could be attached directly underneath the door and attach to the first leg for better stability. (the pictures below only show the full length legs – we missed taking pictures of the shorter legs and actually attaching it to the headboard, but we think you get the general idea, right?!)

We then brought the headboard into my bedroom and aligned my bed frame to the legs.  He drilled 2 holes on either side to attached bolts from the bed frame to the headboard.  He screwed the bolts in, attached the washers and nuts and we were finished!

Like I mentioned yesterday the entire project only cost me $30.55.

{all images taken by Katie or Jen unless otherwise noted}

And I am SO happy with the results!!  My very first headboard as an adult!

So what do you think??  Would you ever make your own headboard?  Have you attempted a chevron pattern before?

Friday was Katie’s birthday.  Obviously.  We had a glorious evening of food from Bucca de Bepo, Katie’s birthday dessert, and lots of laughter.  I decided as I was walking out the door to work that I would spend the night at Katie’s house on Friday and we could go get our bikes tuned up Saturday morning.  We have a big bike trip coming up and my butt bones need to get prepared for it. 

(For the record my butt bones are SO not ready to sit on a bike seat for longer that 1 mile.  We did about 4 on Saturday and then I rode my bike 2.5 miles each way to the grocery store on Sunday and I was basically in tears when I rode over every bump.  Ouch.  Any suggestions??  I have bike shorts and am getting a new seat ASAP.)

Anyways…after the bike store we decided to hit up the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  I have been dying to make a headboard and Aaron (Katie’s husband) had gladly offered his carpentry skills.  I had pinned (and emailed Aaron) a bunch of inspiration headboards – most made out of old barn wood.  (For the record, I’ve started organizing my DIY pinterest board so the only things on there are things I’m actually going to DIY…can I get a what what??)

The problem was finding the wood.  You could buy it some off of Craigslist for about $60 which seemed sort of pricey for old wood.  We decided to check the ReStore to see if they had anything we could use.  We arrived with high hopes which were quickly dashed as we walked through the store.  No old barn wood.  Sigh.

We debated between shutters, cabinet doors and toilet bowl seats.  I was ready to throw in the towel and pay the $60 for barn wood but Katie and Aaron had other ideas.  They headed over to the door section and started spurting out ideas.  Ideas of cutting up a few doors, painting them (or not painting them) and putting them together (somehow) were thrown out.

{image taken by Jen}

We started pulling out door after door looking for 2 that went together, weren’t totally demolished and could look sweet as a headboard.  We finally settled on 2 – 2 panel doors.  We had the thought that we could put the 2 top panels of each door together and paint a chevron pattern inside them.

Lucky for us, the doors at the ReStore were ON SALE…$5 instead of the $10 it usually is so both doors only costs me $10.71 (with tax). I think that’s a bit better than the $60 I was going to pay…

We (and by we I mean Aaron) got them on our hillbilly car with our bikes while Katie and I took pictures of Aaron working and our matching TOMs shoes (for the record, never wear new TOMs or any shoes for that matter while painting…you never know when you might spill…).

{images taken by Jen}

We made it home with both doors, both bikes, 2 hungry children and 3 excited adults.  Tomorrow we’ll show you exactly what we (again, by we I mean Aaron) did and the final product.  And for the record, the entire process from start to finish cost me exactly $30.55.  And that includes about 3/4 of a quart of paint leftover for lots of future projects.

Anyone else be crafty this weekend?  Anyone else getting more organized on pinterest in hopes of actually doing the DIY project you pin?