Ikea DALSELV hack

When Dave and I bought this house about two and a half years ago, we were surprised when our bed didn’t fit into our 3rd floor bedroom. Being new homeowners and thusly, broke as all get out, I went to Ikea and purchased the cheapest bed I could find, thinking that we could take the boxes up the stairs and put the bed together. We really wanted a nice, upholstered headboard, but everything we liked was at least several hundred dollars. Here’s how we got exactly what we wanted for about $150.

We started with the DALSELV bed,
which retails at $99 for the Queen size frame.

Dave sawed off the tips of wood that jut out at the top of the frame so we’d have a neat, rectangular shape to start with. Then he took a piece of plain ol’ fiberboard and cut it the same size as the headboard so I’d have something to upholster over. A mist of spray-mount holds the foam in place.

A layer of foam over the fiberboard is then covered with another layer of batting to smooth out the edges. My budget-saver with these projects is to buy a twin-size foam mattress pad from Target for $10 instead of paying for cut foam at the fabric store, which can run upwards of $50 or even higher. Not super-high quality, but hey, it’s a budget hack.

A layer of batting, also spray-mounted to the foam layer underneath to keep things from shifting around.

I picked this fabric up at The Needle Shop in Bucktown. If you select fabric with a large repeating pattern, get a couple of extra feet to work with so you can center the design. I trimmed the batting at the corners so it didn’t bunch up under the hospital corners that were folded under and stapled on the back of the frame within an inch of their life.

When you pull the batting and fabric over the frame, pull firmly but not so tight that the foam gets lumpy or the pattern distorts. Start from the middle and work your way out, top, bottom, then sides. A bazillion staples later… Just trim away the excess on the back of the headboard. I have another piece of fiberboard that will get screwed onto the back side to keep the dust from collecting inside the frame.