Every trash day, my son notices that I drive more slowly down our neighborhood street. I was mortified the day he said “Are you looking for stuff for the house?”

Busted.

I’m pretty choosy (and a little sheepish) about grabbing discarded items off the curb, but this is what I figure: curbside finds are both free and ecologically friendly! Furthermore, you sometimes come upon a gem you wouldn’t know where to find anywhere else.

When we were decorating Sadler House on a budget, we talked a lot about how we could make our master bedroom more elegant without shelling out the big bucks for a headboard. Of course, there are tons of headboard tutorials on Pinterest, but we were hesitant to take any of these projects on with so little experience.

Then, one trash day, I saw this odd piece of heavy, overly decorative fabulousness on the curb.

Dark and overwhelming, but full of possibilities!

I furtively grabbed it off the trash pile and threw it in the back of my car. When I showed it to my husband, he was dubious. What did I think I was going to do with it? I shrugged. “Hang it on the wall?”

He was skeptical.

It was about this time that I discovered Annie Sloan® chalk paint. I decided that this piece would be so much less oppressive if it were white. What if I messed it up? Well, it didn’t matter, since it was free, after all.

It didn’t take long to paint. Here’s what it looked like after one coat.

One coat wasn’t enough.

The varnish on the wood was mighty. Even the chalk paint couldn’t quite cover it. So I painted it again. Here’s the difference with one coat on the left and two on the right.

The second coat did the trick.

When I had painted both sides, I lightly sanded it to give it some of its dimensions back, since it felt a bit flat. Then we threw it on a moving van with all our other household goods and drove it to Maine.

It sure did look pretty sitting in the master bedroom on our newly restored heart pine floors!

Since my goal throughout the house has been to mix crisp, new things with familiar, elegant things, I wanted to make this part of the bed without creating a grandmotherly disaster. You don’t want to drape something like this with lace. After all, Miss Havisham is not a good model for vacation decor!

Luckily, I had this cute blue-and-white seersucker bedspread my mom had given me years ago. I thought, why not mix the ornate wooden piece with a preppy drape that would serve as a headboard?

We added some strips to the wood piece, anchored it to the studs, and hung a curtain rod right underneath it. Then I used drapery clips to suspend the seersucker bedspread from the rod. The result was exactly what I’d wanted!

Is it nap time yet?

We are in love with our master bedroom and hope you are, too! It just goes to show you…one person’s trash really is another person’s treasure.

Lucky find!