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Today, I'm sharing a tutorial for how to make a DIY Door Headboard out of bifold doors. I grabbed my sets of old closet doors at a local garage sale a while back, but I see these at thrift stores, salvage yards, flea markets, and on Facebook Marketplace all the time. Check out the tutorial below for this DIY Door Headboard.

I was not going to post this tutorial until I repainted our bedside tables, but it doesn't look like that will happen anytime soon. We're actually about to move and this room is about to be dismantled (and hopefully set up similarly at the new place). But, I do hope you enjoy this easy, budget-friendly DIY Door Headboard tutorial...I plan to use it again in our new home.

DIY Door Headboard

This new DIY Door Headboard...well, this new room, actually, was the second thing that resulted from the spring 2015 wallpaper disaster. The first was my office/chalkboard wall. The third is my son's room, which I plan to post about this month, too (fingers crossed). 

If you remember, I botched a major wallpaper removal that caused us to bring in a contractor to repair, resurface, and repaint. While we had him "on retainer", my husband had him paint our bedroom, too...out of nowhere. At first, it ruffled my feathers...I mean, I paint, for crying out loud. But after this contractor's crew of three knocked out our bedroom's paint in one hour flat, I settled down a bit. Okay, relished in it. I told my husband he caused the whooooooole thing with that paint request. I mean...did he expect to get away with painting an entire room and think I wouldn't want new bedding? (Our previous bedding was purchased when we got married...over 13 years ago. It wasn't like I hadn't already been in the market...this just gave me the justification I needed).

Purchasing new bedding opened up this ridiculous new can of worms. My husband actually took it a step further..."Isn't our mattress 13 years old, too?" 

Can opened. No turning back now, man. 

Our previous bed was a queen-sized bed. Over the years, we noticed how much better we both slept on a king-sized bed when we were at a hotel. So, you can see how this whole mess kind of unfolded on him. I bet he never hires anyone to paint a room for me again, right? Heh, heh.

So off to the bed store we went. The salesman who sold us our new bed kept pushing the headboard issue. We had declined several times. Finally, I looked him square in the eye and told him the truth, "No offense, but your headboards are too spendy for me," my husband was hiding from this convo in the truck by this time. "I flat out plan on Pinteresting it up, as far as a headboard goes." 

Leon, the salesman, comes back at me with, "I've heard that a few times, ma'am. I'll see you in a week or so to pick out your headboard." 

After he chuckled to himself, he had the nerve to wink at me. Nope.

Leon, my dear, consider this blog post your own personal throat punch. Wink.   

Putting Together a DIY Door Headboard

After we lived without a headboard for a few weeks...and our pillows kept falling "down the drain" every night, my husband was ready to go crawling back to Leon for one of his stupid, overpriced headboards. My pride just would not let that happen. I kept revisiting these old bifold doors I had in the garage.

I originally purchased these doors at a local church garage sale. I had already spent *almost* every bit of cash I had on other stuff at the garage sale. They were about to close up and were loading these in the pile to haul off as unsold stuff. I asked if they would take less than the $25 a set they were marked for (making them $100 for all eight doors) and they said they'd take whatever. I was terrified I would offend someone because I only had nine bucks in cash left...but they were elated for me to take these off their hands. They even loaded them in my husband's truck for me (I covet his bigger vehicle for good garage-sale-ing, which this ended up being). I had no clue what I would do with these doors (I tend to buy lots of stuff that falls into that category). They sat in my garage for over a year just like this...until it was time for a headboard and this was what I had on hand to work with (oh, I'll show you, Leon!). My dad and I came up with a simple plan to put this together. I'm excited to share the results with you. 

Supplies For DIY Door Headboard

So, the supply list here is a general guideline...every set of bifold doors is different. But the following items are helpful:

• bifold doors (We have a king size bed and the doors extend a bit past it, but we used eight doors in all, and if you look closely, they're not all the same pattern, either. For smaller beds, you'll need less doors.)
• bifold door hinges (find similar ones like ours here on Amazon)
• anchors for wall mounting
• also needed: drill, jigsaw, clamps

Directions

Since we were using more than one set of bifold doors, our main work to do here was attach both sets of doors together, to look like one cohesive set.

• Start by removing all door hardware (besides the door handles, there were pins in the tops of the doors that held them in place in their frames when they served as someone's closet doors). If you create one of these, too, just use pliers to remove those pins.
• We didn't use the handles, but I did save them for "one day".

• My dad engineered the above pictured setup for me to make connecting the doors easier. He used clamps so the doors wouldn't wobble around while we attached the new hinges. 
• The only other thing to keep in mind with this is to make sure you place your new hinges in the same places on the doors that the old hinges are in. That way, they look original-ish.

• Then just screw the new hinges in place. We did pre-drill these holes to prevent the wood from splitting.
• We attached the actual doors to the wall with long screws into studs...we did this below the mattress so the screws wouldn't show. Since the doors were connected, it only required about four screws, total. In one place, we had to cut a hole with our jigsaw for the plug. But there wasn't anything special about installing this DIY Door Headboard. 

I had honestly planned to paint the doors once we had them all attached to each other. But, I ended up really loving the warmth of the wood. 

I set aside my paintbrush and grabbed a can of Liquid Gold (it never ceases to amaze me) to clean these puppies up. Worked like a charm, y'all.

We added sconces on each end to save some real estate on our nightstands. Ironically, the two mis-matched doors that ended up on both ends were solid. So, we didn't even have to anchor the sconces. They didn't require electrical wiring either, as the cords ran inside those pipes and down to the plug. Nobody was more surprised than I was how easy these were to install.

UPDATE, 2021: Since we moved in March of 2016, we still use this headboard in the master bedroom of our new house (see the entire new bedroom here). After we cleaned out my parents' home, we found these brass sconces in a trunk (I believe they belonged to my late uncle). Would you believe the light bulbs (circa 1985) still worked? I'm still laughing at the fact that my mom must have wrapped up those bulbs, too, when storing these. In the current house we're in, the brass works better. Plus, I love the nostalgia these bring to the space.

I do sometimes think about painting the headboard from time to time, but it's worked for six years now, so why mess up a good thing, right? 

I'm really happy with how it turned out. What say you, Leon? Nine. Dollars. BOOM.

See how our new master bedroom looks here on my Instagram photo since I added my parents' bench to the end of the bed. 

More Old Door Projects

• I also shared a tutorial for how we turned an Old Door into a Patio Table here. We still use all the time and really enjoy its aesthetic. 
• Country Road 407 turned an old door into a laundry room shelf here. I absolutely LOVE it!
• And my darling friend, Liz, over at Love Grows Wild turned an old door into a cute bench here. She has the best projects, y'all.