I can’t lie—the first project of the new house is a little random. I desperately need to paint over the nasty gold dining room walls, caulk and paint all the baseboards, create an office space, re-do the stairs, etc. What do I do instead? Build a DIY Rainbow Headboard with Cloud Shelves for Kate.
I have seen so many incredible rainbow rooms for kids, I’ve had it on my radar for awhile. Not to mention, rainbows are so meaningful in our family for multiple reasons… They always show up at the coolest times!
DIY Rainbow Headboard: The Arches
I decided to make my layers with 1/2″ thick sheets of plywood, cut into individual arches. The plywood comes in 4′ x 8′ sheets, so I worked with the dimensions I had.
The biggest arch I could make was just under 8-feet tall and 4-feet wide. Each arch is 6-inches wide, all the way around. One plywood sheet yielded three arches, every other one of the line-up.
I used a plunge router for the first time, and I loved it so much. Just like any other tool, of course, there’s a learning curve. If you can, play around with it on a scrap piece of plywood. I went straight for the real thing and made a few mistakes. Fortunately, I was able to completely hide those in the back of the headboard.
I used a circle jig guide for the curved top and an edge guide for the straight parts. The center of the circle guide didn’t stay put very well, so I had to screw it to the middle of the board. That meant drilling through the metal each time the measurement changed. It was a little bit of a pain but worth it in the end.
After cutting arches out of the first sheet, I took the inside piece to mark the center of plywood piece number two. Once I marked that center hole, I adjusted the circle guide to make the radius of the circle three inches shorter. That way, all the plywood arches would overlap by 3 inches.
When the arches were all cut, I brought one into the room to decide on the height. I cut off about 18 inches from the bottom of each, since the rainbow is starting about that far off the ground.
DIY Rainbow Headboard: The Assembly
I attached each sheet of plywood with little strips of wood 3/4″ thick, using wood glue and nails. To figure out placement, I layered the pieces on top of each other first, to perfectly center them.
Then I traced the inside of the arch to mark where the wood blocks should line up. Once the blocks were glued and nailed in place, they made it super easy to place and attach the plywood arch.
To finish off the assembly (and to make it look prettier), I added this PVC trim to cover up the gaps between plywood layers.
I chose this trim because it was the only trim I could find that would bend. The strips weren’t long enough to cover the entire inside of the arch, so I had to piece them together. If you can find longer, bendable trim, no seams are always better!
I attached the trim with glue and by nailing it into the strips of wood in between each plywood piece. Some areas required a lot of nails!
DIY Rainbow Headboard: Finish Work/Paint Colors
Not going to lie, the finishing work took a decent chunk of time with this one. Totally necessary and worth it though! I used drydex spackle for all the nail holes and flat surface seams. I used caulk for all the seams that came together at an angle.
For paint, I used the new Dynasty line of BEHR paint in a matte finish from Home Depot and chose the following palette:
- Dark Blue center and wall – Rainy Season
- Off-White – Heavy Cream
- Pink – Pearls and Lace
- Light Blue – Oceanic Climate
- Mint Green – Mild Mint
- Dark Green – Nature’s Gift
Yes, I’ve had lots of comments about the colors in the rainbow – but when you make your own DIY rainbow headboard, you get to pick whatever color you like! There are no rules.
I love the way the matte paint and the texture from the plywood “rough it up” a little and offset the femininity of the rainbow.
Some gaps around the curves were big enough to require backer rod shoved in to give the caulk something to sit on. Overall, the caulk and spackle did an awesome job covering up the imperfections.
Bed Base and Cloud Shelves
The bed I attached this headboard to is the Neiden Twin bed from IKEA. We fully assembled the bed before deciding how to attach the headboard. It miraculously worked out that we only had to remove the bar across the top of the original bed headboard to allow the rainbow to sit between to the two sidebars. That allowed most of the arches to sit on the bed frame itself, which supports all the weight.
We will use L- brackets to attach the headboard to the side “poles”/boards and will use anti-tipping hardware at the top of the rainbow for added security. The only thing to call out is that the mattress hangs over the bottom of the bed frame by about 1 inch, since the rainbow takes up some space up top. This is an easy fix by adding a piece of wood to support that last inch.
It should also be mentioned, that the bed base is painted the same Heavy Cream color used in the rainbow!
I knew I wanted to work clouds into the nightstands somehow, and these little cloud bookshelves couldn’t have been more perfect. Hobby Lobby carries a large and small version (linked here). I clamped the bases of these shelves together to get a fuller cloud look.
I attached these to the bed frame itself, then added an additional cloud shelf to the wall on either side. The one on the right is a slightly off-white version from Target (linked here). The addition of the off-white cloud ties into the Heavy Cream color in the palette, as well as the throw pillow and bedspread.
The combo of whites and creams adds some warmth and dimension to the whole look!
To Sum Up…
Multiple times during the DIY Rainbow Headboard build, I questioned the decision to kick off projects in the new house with something like this.
Then I remembered that my very first big DIY project in our old house was the cane headboard I did for our Modern Bohemian Bedroom Re-Design: ORC Week 7 & 8! Now it feels appropriate, and it was all TOTALLY worth that smile!
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