diy upholstered wingback headboard part 1

One of the many projects on my master bedroom renovation list is an upholstered wingback headboard. I’ve been researching plans for wingback headboards for years. Ever since my mom a made a wing back headboard for her bed out of a sleeper sofa. She made a slipcover for the sofa and replaced the thin sofa mattress with hers and made it her all the time bed. It looked amazing and I thought it was genius.

I’ve looked at all kinds of plans over the years. I even checked out furniture making books from the library. I wanted simple plans but a slight curve to the wings. So far everything is either too simple and straight lined or just too complicated and above my skill level.

So yesterday when I was in and out of the garage a billion times working on the wall pocket, it occurred to me this wing chair that’s been sitting in my workroom unfinished for six months, would make the perfect headboard!

See… lovely curved wings and graceful arms! Sorry about the lousy picture.

So I schlepped the chair to the driveway and deconstructed it. I only need the wings and arms. One of the best parts about this transformation is that the chair is already padded and it has plenty of cotton and dacron. So I don’t need to buy that stuff. A huge money saver!

I used a sawzall(reciprocating saw) to cut the chair apart. It only took four cuts. I cut out the piece of wood at the top of the chair between the wings.

And I cut right in front of the arm to remove the front legs. Oh….then I made two more cuts to take off the back legs. So six cuts all together. The hardest part of the whole deconstruction process was removing the decking fabric and four staples that held on the seat springs.

That’s the decking fabric and the spring that were the last thing holding the chair together. The deconstruction took a maximum of 20 minutes. No joke.

I had two long 3″ pieces of plywood left over from my closet cabinet that I cut down to 60″ each, because my bed is a queen and that’s the spaced I need between the wings. I used my handy dandy Craig pocket hole bit set to join the pieces of plywood to the wings. That Craig pocket hole bit set is the best and probably cheapest tool investment.