
1. measure the width of your bed. a queen sized bed is about five feet {60in} wide.
2. decide how high you would like your headboard to be. some people love shorter headboards, some people like theirs to go all the way to the ceiling. i wanted mine to be well above the height of the pillows, about three feet from the top of the bed.
3. buy your wood. i bought five 6'x6"x1" boards for about $35.
4. cut your wood. i cut about six inches off of the end of each board with my power saw because i wanted the headboard slightly wider than the five foot wide bed.
5. sand the edges to your liking.
6. stain your wood. i love this part. i use a micro-fiber cloth and minwax dark walnut stain because that's just my favorite. i put on a pretty light coat of the stain {a little goes a long way} and then go over it again with another layer if i want it darker. let it dry for however long your stain jar recommends. i am bad at this part, so i won't tell you how long i waited.
7. put all of your boards together and decide where you want your letters and how large you'd like them to be. big letters can really make a statement and small letters can be quite charming. i decided to go big, so i used chalk to write out xoxo in semi-cursive on the top 4 boards. i knew the bottom board would end up covered by the pillows, so i left it blank.
8. paint right over the chalk. i used my regular old white acrylic painters' paint and it worked really well. it was very smooth and none of the stain bled through it. let it dry.
9. hang your headboard piece by piece. i measured from the floor up the wall and made three marks to show where i wanted the top of the top board to be. then i nailed the center of the top board right into the wall {screws may be better, depending on what your walls are made of}. i didn't use a level, i just eyed it and made sure it looked straight from the foot of the bed. then i just nailed the center of the last four boards into the wall, making sure all of the parts of the letters lined up, but leaving a small space between each board.
10. once i was sure that the boards were all nice and straight, i nailed the left and right sides of each of them into the wall as well. so, three nails per board.

and that is it! isn't it beautiful?!? and oh so seriously simple.
