Antique Door Headboard DIY Using Kreg Jig!

A few months ago I went to an auction and found some amazing items (like this cabinet turned nightstand, some old galvanized buckets, an old ammo case, and various random antiques) including these antique walnut doors! Although I had to fight pretty hard for them against the one girl who kept buying literally everything but one item I was bidding on (she is now my arch nemesis) I knew they were worth every penny because the only thing I could see was an amazing headboard with them!

 

There are dozens of diy headboard tutorials on Pinterest, but not one featured using two doors instead of one so we kind of winged it- which is common in this household.

Supplies

• 2 antique doors
• Four 2x4x12 boards
• Kreg Jig
• Drill
• Paint or stain
• Finishing Wax

To start off with take your doors and flip them right  side down on a clean sheet and measure the length and height of the combined doors. To the height add however many inches/feet there is between the floor and the top of your mattress, for our queen the height was roughly 23″.

 

1. Cut two matching 2x4s to be the total height of your two doors + the height of your mattress. These will be your sides.
2. Then cut two more matching 2x4s to be the length of your doors. These will be the bottom rail and the board behind the doors at their “seam”.
3. Your last cut will be the top board. Cut the board the length of the doors when the side boards are laying in position.

Note: You could certainly cut the side boards and top board to 45 degree angles to match nicer, but we didn’t.

Because the top piece lays the entire length of the doors plus the 2×4 side pieces we now had a headboard roughly 4″ taller than we originally measured for. We planned this because we didn’t want the bottom of the doors to be hitting right on top of our mattress. This would make making the bed a bigger pain than it already is!

 

Before removing the 2×4 boards to paint be sure to label the pieces! To avoid any confusion, Cyle labeled them using arrows.

I also used my trusty HomeRight sprayer to paint the 2x4s white. I originally was going to stain them to match the doors, but I really wanted the doors to pop!

Once everything is painted lay the 2x4s back in position and label where you want your screws to go to hold them together.

In the below picture you can see where we put our screws.

After the frame is all together predrill holes all around the edges of the doors, about 4 inches apart and screw the frame to the doors, we used 2.5 inch wood screws. This was the part where I started having an anxiety attack over my pretty antique doors getting drilled into. Cyle was thankfully patient with me and only rolled his eyes a handful of times. 😉

For extra support you could also use some wood glue as well, we were out so we just put in extra screws to be safe. Then flip the headboard upright, clean off, and seal with some Antiquing Wax.

A lot of the DIYs I saw on Pinterest also showed the headboard being screwed into the frame of the bed, but we just shoved the bed against the wall.

 

As you can tell from the photos, I still haven’t bought the bedding that I want from Crane and Canopy, maybe Santa will bring me it early this year? 😉 You can also tell that I got sick and tired of the stupid corner shelves and demoed out the bottom ones so we could fit our headboard.

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