Fisher is now 7 months old, and was in desperate need of a high chair. We looked all over to find one that we liked, but had no luck. We wanted a vintage wooden one, but all that we found were ridiculously expensive. Big plastic models were looming in our future when our friend Betsy spotted this metal gem at a vintage store for $20. She grabbed it for us. Jed was horrified.
The poor chair was all kinds of ugly, and Jed though there was no hope. As eternal optimists, Betsy and I saw lots of potential. I took the ugly duckling home and it sat in the garage for a while until we had time to get the project completed.
The tray has already been sanded in the above pic. It was originally the same color as the back below. Ick.
Ugly, oh yes she’s ugly. On the other hand, she is very well made and easily folds to store flat against the wall. The tray also removes completely so that it can be easily cleaned. Awesome.
The tan seat and seat back had to go, immediately. My mama and I went to visit City Craft, a great Dallas fabric store. I wanted to find some oil cloth to recover the chair so that it would be durable and easily cleaned. City Craft has a great selection, and had a sale going on. I choose an oil cloth design in black and white that looks like Mexican papel picado decorated with birds, flowers, and calaveras (happy dancing skulls a la El Dia de Los Muertos).
We removed the cushions and Jed sanded the ugly bronze paint off of the seat, tray, and back. The legs and arms were already in pretty good shape.
I removed the vinyl covers off of the seat and back, and then laid them out on my oil cloth.
I cut a big square for each one.
Then I trimmed it down to size. I had to trim it even more so that it would fit well.
Meanwhile, Jed painted the tray, seat, and back with a lovely light turquoise. He had to do 3 coats to get it to look right.
To recover the seats, I had to carefully stuff the oil cloth behind and under the seat and the back. Then we hammered the seat and back in. This was the trickiest part of the whole project. I got a little frustrated, but persevered so that we could have this lovely creation.
What do you think?
I love it.
I love the black and white, the papel picado design, the paint color, everything. I’m a little obsessed with it, quite frankly.
Fisher loves it too.
The metal makes a great sound when he bangs his little hands on it, and an even better noise when he bangs his sippie cup.
I love using vintage pieces because they are often so much higher quality than plastic crap from Target. We love Target and have our share of plastic baby stuff, but are happy when we can have something a little more stylish and sturdy to go with the rest of our house.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for putting up with the insane amount of pictures in this post. Like I said, I’m obsessed.
How have you used or repurposed vintage furniture or baby gear?
I’m sharing this project at some great blog parties. They are listed on my right sidebar. Be sure to check them out to see tons of awesome crafty ideas. Thanks for reading.
Kids love a tent to play in, and curling up in a reading nook is so much fun. For those reasons we decided to give our kids a sweet little play tent for Christmas this year. We had two requirements. It needed to be cute and easily stored. I didn’t want something huge and ugly in my living room, and I wanted to be able to take it down and set it up in seconds. Today we’re sharing how we created our DIY play tent and reading nook as part of the Fort Building Challenge from Building Blocks and Acorns. Be sure to check out all the other inspiring forts all month long here as well as our recent pillow fort here.
