Pallet Wood Headboard

This was my wife's Christmas gift 2015. As with all my projects, I tend to make them up as I go along so if I don't have clear enough instructions, I apologize. I had seen several of the pallet wood headboards on this site and decided to make one of my own. I planned on doing it for several months but while I was in nursing school, the world pretty much stopped. The pallets I got for free from a local roofing company ended up sitting on my back porch for about a year. This unintentionally gave the pallet wood a really nice grey weathered petina color. I think the resulting look is great. You can also leave them natural color or stain them any color you choose.

Sketch out design. Not perfect, but this was my idea. I work full time in an ER as a nurse and part time as a prehospital nurse on a local ambulance crew, so one slow evening in the ER, I drew out my design on a scrap of a box of medical supplies.

One piece of plywood.
Two 2x4s
Pallet wood (these arent the exact ones i used).
2 inch screws
1 inch screws

This part was really easy. Screw the plywood to the two 2x4s vertically. Then paint the plywood black to hide imperfections/gaps (i didn't, but wish i would have.) next line your first row of boards along the bottom of the plywood and screw them down. Continue to layer boards to the top. Try to get boards all of similar size in each row to minimize gaps. You may need to cut scraps. Randomly stagger your left and right edges to make imperfect edges. You can line them all up, but I think some of the beauty of pallet wood is in its imperfections.

So this is a toss up, i made the 2x4s to where they lined up with a queen sized frame. Originally, i drilled 2 holes in each board and attached the frame to the boards. This made the bed moveable as one unit like a regular headboard. The negative to this setup was it was quite noisy due to movement and hitting the wall sometimes during nap time and bedtime. ;-) it is a very top heavy setup. I ended up getting 3 L shaped brackets for each of the two legs and attached it directly to the wall with drywall screws and anchors. Much more secure and no more dents in the wall.