This post is the third and final piece documenting the Bed Project, wherein I designed and built my own bed.

The last step to completing my bed was upholstering the entire particle board box. I purchased enough sheets of one-centimeter-thick foam from a local foam store. The foam store employees agreed that foam thicker than 1 cm is difficult to upholster using just a simple staple gun. Using a regular staple gun from the hardware store, I covered the four box sides of the bed. I tried to not staple anywhere that would be visible or touchable on the top or side of the bed. Instead, I stapled on the inside edge of the boxes where the mattress would hide the staples and under the lip of each empty-bottomed box side. The bed in it’s partly upholstered state is shown here below.

Next I covered the foam with grey tweed upholstery fabric which I bought at a fabric store specializing in furniture fabrics. I simply used the staple gun in the same manner as described above so as to hide the staples. The material does fray a bit on some edges. I folded the fabric once and tucked the fraying edges under before stapling. Where I had a seam in the fabric, I sewed using a whip stitch by hand after stapling. Pressing the seam after stitching makes the seams almost invisible. For each corner I mitered the fabric and cut away the excess bulk before stapling down. Here is a final view of the bed after finishing the upholstery with just the mattress:

Behind the bed you can see a bright purple tufted satin headboard which I also built myself. I first detached a silver frame from the mirror with which it was purchased. I kept the backing sheet of particle board from behind the mirror. I cut a five centimeter thick slab of foam to the size of the frame with regular scissors. I then measured out a diagonal grid of my tufting pattern and poked holes completely through the foam. To tuft, I pulled the purple satin through to the back of the foam through each tuft’s hole and anchored the fabric with a rectangle of cardboard, shown here:

I worked my way from one end of the foam to the other to keep the fabric as taut as possible on the finished tufted side:

I squished the finished fabric tufted foam up through the frame and pulled the fabric tight on each edge:

Then I flipped the whole thing upside down and put the saved piece of particle board backing on the back. I stapled the backing board back into the frame and trimmed the purple satin to a few centimeters:

Folding the fabric over on itself and gluing it to the backing board with a hot glue gun was the final step.

The purple satin headboard is hung on the wall behind the bed and makes for a comfortable place to lean and read a book in bed. That wraps up my Bed Project documentation on how to design and build your own bed with a minimum of tools. I hope with this series you might be inspired to design and build your own modern designer bed.