I made some significant progress last night and this morning. The last component to build is the support for the crown molding at the top of the head board. As with my former posts on this project I started with a simple ladder frame to get the desired height. The main purpose of all these frames is to break the entire headboard into manageable pieces that can be carried up stairs easily. The basic frame below assembled and ready to go.
I bolted the ladder frame to the top of the headboard and noticed I did not take into account that I wanted the crown molding to drop down over the raised panels so I had to add a couple filler strips as seen below. These furring strips will bump the back of the crown out a 3/4”, or the depth of the raised panel frame.
With the furring in place it’s time to tackle the crown and it’s miter cuts. No magic here, just slow going, clamping, checking fit and tweaking with the saw, chisel or file to get the fit tight. This material is salvaged door casing and it was pretty beat up on the face, which is while I will be filling the scars with wood dough and painting the trim. The back side of the trim was also pretty hacked up and presented some interesting challenges and a little more work to get the miters to align. Basically during the original install of this trim, they modified the back of the trim, just as I am doing now, to get it to fit.
Another close-up of the miter joint glued and ready for finish nails. I had to switch to 2-1/2” finish nails and crank the pressure on the compressor to get the nails to sink just right on this hardwood trim.
Ready for the next piece of trim along the front. I didn’t have any casing long enough to span the length of the headboard, so I decided to break the trim about 1/2 way and put a miter in to help conceal the joint. As luck would have it, none of the other door casings lined up really well with this piece of casing so I had to use a bigger filler joint than I had wanted as well as perform some serious profile sanding to get the two pieces to line up well.
The image below is not the clearest but you get the idea. I left a 1/16” gap, loaded it with filler and then chiseled and sanded to get the profiles to line up. Normally this would bum me out, but since this is going to painted I can live with this minor woodworking imperfection that will be covered by paint.
With the trim complete and some wood filler drying I turned my attention to trimming our the sides. The sides are no frills with butt joints so they went together quick. I started at the top and worked my way down doing one side at a time.
Trimming out the horizontals below, pretty boring.
Below one side completely trimmed out, rinse and repeat on the other side.
I just had to throw a couple raised panels in the headboard to see how they look. Before I put them in, I went ahead and sanded everything with some 15—grit sandpaper. Its not looking pretty yet with the sanding and filler, but once I get a coat of primer on it I thing it will start to clean up.
Some side view below.
Up next sanding, drilling some holes in the case, and installing the top shelf.
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