It was a really ugly brown color with lots of scratches and dings (Bobby forgot to let me take a picture before he sanded the ugly out of it) so you'll just have to take my word for it.
We bought a Deep Walnut stain and packed on a couple coats as well as one top coat of polyurethane to seal it in. The problem was the slat of wood in the middle. It was just too thin of a piece of wood and it didn't take the stain the same way the rest of the wood did. See how it's a greenish, brownish, yellowish color. Yuck!
As beautiful as the rest of the wood came out, that whole middle part was making me feel all gaggy so we had to do something to fix it! Insert Bobby and all of his bajillion talents.
And he came up with a pretty cool plan to cover a thin sheet of fiber board with batting and a light tan color micro-suede fabric, which we would then place over the gaggy wood in the middle.
First we cut the batting into 4 equal strips to get 4 layers of padding between the board and the fabric (batting and fabric from JoAnns, board from Home Depot). Then we used a spray adhesive to glue the batting to the board.
We just glued one layer at a time.
Then we glued a couple inches of fabric to the back of the board so that we could pull the other side tight against the board so there wouldn't be bubbles or air pockets in the fabric.
Left side glued. Then we glued the top and bottom of the fabric to the board-pulling tightly both times to get a smooth finish.
Like this!
Then just for good measure so humidity or whatever wouldn't make the spray adhesive less sticky over time we added a strip of duct tape over where the top and bottom layers met in the middle.
And then popped her right on in. We thought we might have to use wood glue to keep it in, but it actually fits just perfectly if you push in real hard on both sides. The fabric makes it snug right up against the edges. Which is nice so that if we ever decide to do something different (like use bedboard, or change the fabric, whatever) it's super easy to pop back out and re-do to create a whole new look!
So from this...
...to this.
And this...
...to this!
We're pretty happy with the way it turned out! Now just to find some cute bedding to pull the whole room together-someday! (oh total cost; including headboard, stain, polyurethane, spray adhesive, sandpaper, fiber board, batting and fabric=$32.00...not bad eh?)