"Why you wanna leave me?"

In the words of Gus from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, " Why you wanna leave me?" this is what i was asking my daughter when she decided that she was going to spread her wings and move out. Even though i thought it was too soon she was ready for something new. She is attending Lone Star College and working. But for some reason she was ready to take on more responsibility. Why would she want to do that? Beats me. Maybe it was my simple constant requests to keep her room clean or the lenient very strict curfew i gave her. Oh well, i know she is safe and we talk daily and when she is not working or in school she will come home and chill eat all of my food. I guess this is what it like to be the parent of (ready or not) young adults.

Well as soon as she moved out my son had all of her left over junk stacked in my dining room. He said he was taking the bigger room. "What if she comes back" i asked him. He simply replied " Then she can have the smaller room" so began my quest to make a space to use as a guest (Delilah)- craft room. 

I started by finding a quilt at Home Goods

It is the bottom pattern. Then i decided that i wanted to make a headboard to keep things cheap. I really didn't have a lot of money to put into this room but wanted it to look like some place you wouldn't mind spending time in. So i found the brown polka dotted pattern that i figured i would use by making a bed skirt or something.

I used to have a door turned on its side for headboard in my bedroom but have since then bought my very own bedroom furniture....but that's a different blog. The door was what I was thinking of when i was going to make one for the guest room, however I found out that my 20 yr old kid for a son decided to take that door and skateboard on it? I don't know i just know that it is a door no longer....so back to the drawing board. I decided to make it look like a mantle of sorts.

I bought

MDF that happened to be the length of the full size bed

4 1x3 1/2 lengths of white boards? I think that is what it was called it was lighter that the pine and knew it would be perfect for what i needed.

I measured an cut the first 2 pieces to lay accross the front of the plywood at the width of the bed. One to lay flat and one as the ledge. The other two i measured from the floor to the top of the mattress then the hight of the headboard and cut and attached with wood screws and construction adhesive.

I added some thin molding to the bottom of the ledge to trim it out.

After filling in the holes with wood filler i sanded and painted it brown.

After that dried i painted it a creamy white and sanded the corners to let the brown show through.

Once the painting was done (Whew!!!) i had a margheritta or two.
The next day.... I cut a piece of MDF to the size (a little smaller) of the gap in the middle of the headboard and wrapped it with batting and the brown polka dotted fabric.

I think it's looking pretty good.....but stay tuned its not done yet.:-)