DIY Cornice Boards

The nursery is coming along! One area we knew needed improving was the windows. The room has a southern exposure, so it gets sun all day! We knew we wanted blinds and curtains, but thought that white blinds and gray curtains wouldn't be enough color for the biggest wall in the room. Hello, Pinterest and cornice boards!

There were so many different blogs that have their own take on DIY cornice boards, and we knew we didn't want to have to deal with the weight of using wood to create ours. I discovered this post from "Learn and Go", and loved the light-weight option of using insulation board.

OFF TO HOME DEPOT!

This was actually the same trip we went on to get the gutters for the book shelves, so we took the advice of a worker and asked, very nicely, for the tool rental guy to cut the 4' x 8' piece of insulation in half so that it would fit in the car.

Next we ran over to JoAnn Fabrics to pick up a back of batting:

Besides the batting and insulation board, we needed:

• Hot glue gun

• Fabric (I had previously bought the coral chevron duck cloth at Hobby Lobby)

• Measuring tape

• Duct tape

• Staple gun

• Razor Blade

• Sharpie

• L Brackets

I started by measuring out the different pieces I would need on the insulation board.

I cut the two faces of the corncie boards to be about 6 inches wider than our window (to extend 3 inches on either side) and about 13 inches high. For the side supports, I cut 4 pieces 13 inches by 4 inches. This way, the cornice boards would extend 4 inches out from the wall, leaving room for our curtains.

Tip! We used a straight edge to cut the foam with the razor blade. Even then, it was hard to cut a absolutely straight line. We ended up sanding down the edges to even things out before we began constructing the boards.

Next, we put the boards together using hot glue and then reinforced with duct tape.

Time to cover! After leaving the glue to cool, I started the covering process first by stapling on the batting and then the fabric. One nice thing about the chevron pattern was that keeping the fabric design straight wasn't too difficult.

The hardest part about covering the boards was, of course, the sides. You have to cut the fabric and batting on the inside corner to make it easier to wrap the sides. We also needed two people, one to hold the board vertically and another to staple, as we worked on the sides. (Yes, there was one occassion where the hot glue didn't hold up and we had to go back and do reconstructive surgery. Not fun at the time- but not a big deal.)

They looked so pretty at the time, and seeing as it was 11:00 at night, it felt great to have them covered. It was reality check time, however, when we had to figure out how to hang these from the wall. On the "Learn and Go" post, they added a top piece to the board so that it would be super easy to hang off of an L bracket. I thought that this would be too hard for me to cover with fabric, so I didn't add that top piece.

In my research for a solution, I stumbled across this post from VanHill Designs. They actually created a support piece in the middle of their board so that they could still use the simple L bracket as a way to hang the cornice boards, but because it wasn't visible, they didn't need to cover it with fabric. DING DING DING! We have a solution! We borrowed their idea, and went to Hobby Lobby to buy some pins.

Ryan then went through the process off cutting out the pieces and pinning them to the back of our boards:

We probably could have used hot glue again as some extra reinforcement, but because the batting was covering this section AND Ryan cut the piece to just the right size that it had to be wedged into the space to fit anyway, we ended up being just fine with the pins alone.

The last step was to screw in and the L brackets, and- ta-da!- our cornice boards were FINALLY done!

We love the way they look, and they definitely add some color to that side of the room. It felt great to finally have the windows done, and all we need now are some curtain hooks to keep the curtains pulled back when they aren't in use.

Just in case you want the info:

Curtains: Target Room Essentials

Cordless top down/bottom up blinds: Select Blinds

Floor Lamp: Hamptom Bay from Home Depot (we have the same lamp in the Family room and love it!)

Where do you think you could add some color with DIY cornice boards? I have a feeling this will be a repeat project for us...especially since we have insulation board left over!

#nursery #homedecor