I'm Making My Headboard

A few weeks ago, I decided that we needed a headboard.  We have a king size bed on a cheap metal frame just pushed up against the wall.  Boring.  But I really didn't want to spend a lot of money.  I searched many different sites for ideas - but everything was way too expensive.  And any of the affordable options were sort of flimsy.  So, on a recent trip to Buffalo ReUse (one of my favorite second hand stores), I searched for something I could use to make a headboard.  After wandering through the many isles of old treasures, I decided on an old door.  I know it's been done many times, but it is a great solution for my bedroom.  Craig and I spotted a door right away.  We measured it, looked it over, and set it aside.  Then we looked through the hundreds of other old doors they had.  Because I just wasn't sure.  But in the end, we bought the first door we found.  And for $10, we were thrilled to take it home.  It has resided in my garage ever since -

So how did we choose this door?  Well, we had a few reasons.

     -It was symmetrical.  Very important to us (even though I've seen this type of project done without a care to symmetry and look wonderful)
    - It didn't have too many layers of paint already.  I really didn't want to sand this thing down for days.  And this door had very little paint to smooth out.
     -It was simple in design.  Even though we are using a door, I didn't really care for it to scream "I'm a door" when we were done.
    -It was the perfect dimensions.  Which was a great surprise to us when we picked it out so fast.

So, I'm finally getting around to working on this project.  I put it on sawhorses -

And inspected the damage (it was pretty minor) -

I used a scraper and sander to clean it up -

After I scraped the loose paint and sanded the whole surface, I filled in the holes with wood putty -

I'll give it another quick sand as soon as it dries.  Then, I'll wipe the whole door down with a tack cloth.  I'm going to prime and paint it this afternoon.  But I'm still trying to decide on a color - black or white.  I have leftover paint and could go either way.  I guess I'm going to have to decide soon...