Super Easy and Simple DIY Headboard Made from a Door

This summer we moved my oldest son into his own bedroom.  It has been a very fun change for him and he is super excited to decorate his own room in his own style.  We really haven’t done much (it’s summer, we’ve been busy) but the other day I happened to find some awesome door at a garage sale and I couldn’t pass them up, so I thought that it would be a fun to turn one of them into a headboard to add to his plain room.  He wanted it to be black, so I thought, why not make it a chalkboard too :).  It was super easy to make and in the end only cost us about $12 to make!

Here is his room before.  So boring and plain.  He has a queen size bed because it’s the guest room when people come and visit.  The bed looks so much better with the headboard.

Here are the two doors that I scored from a garage sale.  The guy was asking $20 each for them, I ended up getting them for $9 each (that’s all the money I had and he really just wanted to get rid of them!).  

The first thing I did was power washed them and then sanded them down.  Luckily the back of them weren’t nearly as dirty and painted as the front.  

Since he only has a queen size bed, we had to cut the door down to size.  We cut it to 65″ using a table saw.

I did two coats of regular black paint onto the door.

Then I did two coats of the chalkboard paint.

Once it’s completely dry and set, you have to rub chalk all over it.  So I did that and then wiped it off with water and a cloth.

Since doors are hallow, we wanted to make it some “legs” to rest on so it’s not just screwed into the wall and all the weight is on the screws.  Since these boards are hitting the ground, we had to cut a little notch at the bottom where the baseboard is.  

We screwed the 2x4s into the studs on the wall.  

Then using pocket screws (we drilled the holes before we screwed them onto the wall) we screwed the door onto the legs.  We also screwed the door into the wall too.

My son wants to have an outer space theme in his room, so I cut out some glow in the dark vinyl with my Silhouette.  And then I put it onto the headboard.

Then I wrote a fun message for my son with chalk.

And that’s it!! I made a couple of pillows for him to give it a little bit of color.  He loves how it turns out (especially the planets, it’s so cool to see them in the dark).