Weekend Project: Make a DIY Army Canvas Headboard

Chris in How To

2/6/15

[updated: 1/5/21]

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This DIY headboard project makes a very fine way to add a little rustic texture to your sleep space. It uses a 5×7′ canvas tarp (twenty bucks!) and, the best part, no sewing. Just some 2x4s, a bit of plywood, and some staples and screws to hold it all together.

Megan tells the story of her inspiration:

Our dream for the guest bedroom was to bring inspiration from our favorite places we have traveled and hotels we have stayed at. One of these places is the Ace Hotel. These hotels are the perfect oasis in the cities they reside in. Although we have not been to the Ace in Portland, we have been to the New York, LA, and Palm Springs hotels and we have always loved the softy/pillow-like headboards. We love the headboards in Palm Springs, but love the army color in the Portland hotel. We want the guest room to feel like hotel room, remember us saying that? Well, this is our way of making that happen.We looked all over for a DIY on building a similar Ace hotel headboard and we found pretty great ideas, but nothing that matched what we had in our heads. So, we took it as a challenge and have created our first home DIY. We have been planning this headboard since the end of December and this last weekend we finally conquered it. It took a lot of planning, some math, a lot of sketching, and a few fights. After 5 pages of sketches, a lot of measuring, hours spent hunting for the right color canvas online, and a very friendly man at Home Depot we finally gathered everything we needed.

Looks to me like they nailed it.