DIY Fabric Cornice Board over french doors

DIY Fabric Cornice Board over two sets of french doors. Total cost of project: $55.00. Total amount of time: Roughly 5 hours.

Well I finally did it! I have this hesitation when it comes to ruining things that are brand new by using for a purpose other than what it's intended to do. But I did it! I bought a brand new panel from World Market and cut it all up to make cornice boards over my french doors in my family room.

This is a project we've known we were going to do for a while, but had to wait until I found the perfect fabric. Since my walls are a cool color, I wanted to warm it up a bit with the fabric. I was at World Market spending the day shopping for my birthday with my dearest friend who's birthday falls on the same day as mine when I spotted my fabric. One panel was $30, but I only needed one to cover both sets of french doors. Sold!

I told dear hubs we could do it the less expensive, easiest way by using a foam board like I've seen other bloggers do, but because ours in over sets of french doors and is in the main rooms of the house he said we should use wood . Here's step by step how we did it:

We used douglas fir (total cost of wood, $20) and went with 12 inches long and made it to come away from the wall 2 1/2 inches. After attaching it though, we would've been better off coming 3 inches away from wall.

As you can see in the picture, hubs screwed the 2 1/2 inch board to the long board. This created the box he needed to attach it to the wall which you'll see later in the post.

 

Here's a better picture of the board. Remember, it's going over a set of french doors so it has to be pretty long.

 

I put batting (cost of batting, $4.50) on top of the board to soften the look just a bit before putting on the fabric.

 

 

 

Here is the fabric ($30 for fabric) before I used a nail gun (but used staples) to attach the fabric:

 

 

I don't own a staple gun, but we do own a nail gun and guess what your hardware store sells?!?! small staples that fit in nail guns! Woo Hoo!

 

Here are what the staples look like.

 

Make sure to pull your fabric tight before you staple. You'll also want to keep in mind how the pattern will be cut if you use fabric with a pattern or design on it.

It didn't look so pretty underneath, but no one sees that part.

 

This is the fun part. Hubs built this to hold the board. So the screws that you see not completey in, will be screwed in once the cornice is placed up here. Inventive, huh?! Only my hubs.

 

He's using the screwdriver to drive in the screws. This part is when he realized coming 3 inches off the wall would've been better than 2 1/2, due to the tight squeeze of trying to fit the screwdriver up there.

 

Here it is all hung up! It's dark outside so our fabric blinds are already drawn for the night, but I'll try to post some pictures in the daylight tomorrow.

 

 

Here they are the next morning with the sun out!

 

 

Excuse the mess, and we're missing few pictures that hang on the wall in between the doors.