A Headboard Ahead

My friend’s little girl is going into Kindergarten -- the Big Time. Thus, she is upgrading to a nice queen size bed. Ahhh, the life. Truth is, her parents are upgrading to a King, so she gets the old Queen. Seriously, this little child is one princess who will definitely grow up to have all the grace of a Queen. Spunky, adorable, polite, and full of questions -- I love her! So when her mom, a very dear and old friend (I’ve known her pretty much my entire life), asked me to tweak the tired headboard, of course I said yes.

We debated about what to do with it. Her room is a very light yellow with pink accents in the curtains and bedding. My vote was to‘funkify’ the plain jane headboard and paint it a high-gloss, hot pink just to spark it up a notch, à la this:

(image via Elle Decor)

Note the gorgeous chest on chest in the corner of the room. The fact that it is painted bright yellow is totally unexpected and playful. I LOVE it, and always reference it in my head when I go scouting for furniture, or plan to redo a room. Case in point, I painted my son's bed bright orange. (Anyone know who the designer of this room is? I saved the image a while back as one of my favorites.)

But her momma, otherwise known as the boss in this situation, politely said “Um….no,” every time I mentioned the idea of the hot pink headboard. To my trained eye, what she was actually thinking was “Um, no. And, seriously Katherine, you crazy!” Maybe I was a little ahead of myself?!

The beginning to the end of this little story is that we settled on my ole standard, the antiqued look. Hey, a little patina goes a long way.

Here is the headboard before:

Plain Jane, No Thank You Mam.

And after:

An Oxymoron of a Headboard: Newly Antiqued

I obviously need a better camera than my iPhone. Anyone have any suggestions? These pictures do not show off how gorgeous the bed turned out. As soon as she has it up in her room with her bedding, I’ll post another picture with hopes that her momma has a better camera than moi.