During a drive to the store one evening, I spotted an old 6′ stockade fence tossed to the curb. Well, of course I had to pick it up. Free lumber! To fit this wood in our Pontiac Vibe I had to push the passenger’s and the driver’s seats as far as they could possibly go forward. Good thing I’m short. My knees were a bit more jammed into the dashboard than I like, but for these extremely weathered planks, it was totally worth it. I decided this material would be perfect for creating a reclaimed wood headboard for my son’s vintage airplane room.

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The first step I took to create the headboard was disassembling the fence and removing all nails.

Sure that may sound like an easy task, but I assure you it was not. The rusty nails kept breaking apart and getting stuck in the wood. It took a while, but I did eventually get all those little spikes removed.

Next, I used my mouse sander to smooth out each board.

Then I stained each board using my favorite stain, Minwax Special Walnut and added a nice protective finish with three coats of Minwax Polycrylic.

After that, my husband used the drill to screw two 1″ thick boards perpendicular to the planks. He made sure to secure each plank to these wood pieces for stability. We also added a third piece that was attached parallel to the top plank. This board is what we used to attach the entire headboard to the wall. (More on that in a minute.)

As you can see, the wood possessed LOTS of character right from the beginning. And if that wasn’t enough…

We accidentally drove right over the headboard when making one of those emergency trips to the hardware store mid-project. Oops! (If you work on a lot of projects, then you probably understand the type of emergency I am referring to.)

Look real close. You can see a big ol’ ding across the planks. Good thing we like that “weathered” furniture look or we would have had some extra work to do.

For the last step of this project, I had purchased a French Cleat Picture Hanger Kit and closely followed the instructions on the packaging to attach the headboard to the wall of my son’s room. This little do-dad was the perfect find for hanging up something so heavy.

Of course this step took two people to accomplish, because I had no interest in breaking my back and I probably would have if I would have attempted this as a solo task.

This project turned out awesome! I could not be more proud of all of our hard work we put into this headboard.

The price to us was $10. Woo-hoo! We had to purchase the French cleat, but everything else we had on hand. The most important part though, is that our son loves it!