Come Into My Bedroom . . .

Boy am I beat tonight! It was a very hectic day at work and then I had to run a few errands on the way home. Then cook dinner. Then lay around on the sofa watching TV, too pooped to muster up the energy and motivation to make my way into the Sweat Shop. One more day of work to get through before the weekend. I'm about ready to climb into bed, but I thought I'd invite you into my bedroom for a few minutes.

A couple of you asked me about my "headboard" that I mentioned earlier in the week. I know I've talked about it briefly and posted photos a couple times before, but I think it's been a little while, so if you're sort of new to my blog, you probably haven't seen what I did a several years back. And even if you've been reading "me" for awhile, I'll show you a couple things you haven't seen before. So come on in! And please ignore any mess you see if you should decide you want to look closely at anything--I wasn't really prepared for company, but you're special!

So, there's my "headboard." (Ignore that pole on the left of the photo. It's just what I use for pole dancing. No, not really--my husband uses it to get in and out of bed because the muscular dystrophy has affected the muscles in his back.) Several years ago when I repainted my bedroom and rearranged things, I knew that wall needed something and we didn't have a "real" headboard, so I used molding strips to frame out three rectangles on the wall. They look like this:

Using a glue gun, I glued Velcro to the wall. The nice thing about the glue gun is that the glue will peel off the wall if I want. The bad thing about the glue gun is that the glue will peel off the wall when I don't want, and every time I change out the panels, I usually have to glue a couple strips of Velcro back on the wall. Still, I like the effect and I like to be able to change the look of the room, so I think it's worth it. When I was trying to decide where to place the rectangles for the panels, I chose to place them just above my pillows. If this is something you want to do, you may want to place them a little lower--or not. It's completely up to you. Here's where mine are placed without the pillows on the bed:

The panels are made with a base of foam core board. At my office, we sometimes have blow-ups made to use as exhibits at trial, and I've appropriated a few of those when trial's over and they're no longer needed. Foam core board is light weight but fairly stable--it won't bend like poster board will. I'm sure there are other things that would work as well--you need something light weight but not too easily bendable. Mainly, you don't want something so heavy that the Velcro's going to give way in the middle of the night and hit you on the head! Here's what the back of one looks like:

You'll see that I've also attached Velcro to the backs of the panels--that's what holds them onto the wall. The panels are padded with a thick batting--you can even use a couple layers--and then fabric is pulled over and around and then the handy glue gun secures the fabric. If I had it to do all over again, I think I'd just prewash my fabric and run an elastic casing around the edge so the fabric could be placed over the foam core boards and removed for washing or just to change to a different print on occasion--it would fit a little like a shower cap, except I would hope it would fit a little bit better!

If I had done it that way, I wouldn't have to store all the panels I'm not using at any given time. Right now I have three sets--the blue and white that are up on the wall (made from a cheap sheet I bought for the purpose),

a wine floral in a chenille upholstery fabric (great at Christmas time and in the winter),

and some pieced panels that match a quilt I put on the bed in the fall.

Now here's a little secret I'm sharing just with you, my close Blogland friends. Our house is small, and over the years, I've been very inventive about finding storage space. Years ago, I was watching a home dec show and they talked about bed frames designed to give a person storage space under the bed. So, when we got a new box spring and mattress years ago, I designed and built a base for the bed that I could use to store plastic bins containing off-season clothing and other things. Here's a peek under the bed skirts (I use two layers of skirts because the frame raises the bed up higher than normal to allow room for storage--the bottom skirt goes under the box spring and the top skirt goes on top of the box spring):

We have a king size bed, so I bought four boards measuring, I think, 2" x 10" and 6 feet long. On top of that is 1/2" plywood that's screwed into those boards that form the support. See the storage space I have? There are three spaces that extend the width of the bed. I used metal braces on either side of the bed that are screwed into the wood to keep the box spring from sliding from side to side.

Well, I think that probably answers your questions and then some. Time for me to climb into bed--it's waiting for me.