Remaking an Antique Bed (Vacation - Day 1)

I gave my daughter Jasmin a strong hint last year that this bed, that I found on Kijiji in her city, would make a great birthday present for her Mother, yeah, me.  Women obviously pick up on these things much quicker than men because the next time I went to visit, there it was in her hallway (lack of storage).  It stayed there for months until we were finally there with a truck.  She and Dan are such good sports, that would have driven me crazy!  Anyway, I love this bed, and I wasn't sure what I would do with it.  There were two problems, it is a double size, and old beds are sometimes really short!  I finally figured out how I was going to make it into a Queen size, and then realized that maybe that wasn't the best thing to do.  I decided I need a headboard more at camp than I do at home, and since the bedrooms are teeny tiny there (7.5' X 7.5'), it was probably better to leave it as a double.  Okay, well that cut out some of the work.  I still didn't like the height of the headboard.  So here is how I fixed that.

Ha ha, are you thinking that maybe the picture below is the "before" pic, nope, it was perfectly good when it came to me, then I knocked it apart.  Things always look worse before they look better.

So, after making little pieces out of big pieces, something I do really well, I did a little cutting, and used my Kreg jig, and my new screws that I got in the mail this week... and I added 2 of the boards from the footboard (I wanted the wood to match as someone had already stripped this piece and refinished it).  This filled out the bottom of the headboard so that I could make it taller, and still have some headboard where the pillows will be.  I couldn't leave a gaping hole.  After that I added 17" to the bottom of the legs.  In the picture below you can compare how much taller the headboard is now, compared to the footboard.  I am not going to use the footboard (well, what's left of it) with this bed, but will save it for another project.

I had to show it here with a queen size set because that's all I have here right now, which I realize looks a little ridiculous, but I wanted you to see the height, and how much better it looks, just imagine it 17" shorter, it would hardly be seen!