The playroom makeover is done and dusted, and I've moved on to pastures new (gross, grubby pastures, in the form of our ensuite bathroom), but before I let you in on my plans for that and how it's going I thought you might be interested in a little update we did on the Latt table and chairs we have for the kids.
We bought this set in the heady rush of our very first trip to Ikea (the one where I was hugely pregnant and we needed to furnish an entire house) and it's served us well. But I always meant to jazz it up a bit, and now was the perfect time. Plus, the fact that there was a lip on the table made it very hard to clean and caused any spills to pool, so it was pretty manky and bubbly around the edges. Then of course you had the usual child-damage of scribbles and stickers...
If I ever open a kids clothes shop that's what I'm calling it, dibs!
All in all it needed some TLC.
So, the plan was to add a bigger top, so the kids could actually both use it at the same time and it would be much easier to clean, and to paint and upholster the chairs to make them comfier, with the hopes that their pampered, comfortable bums will encourage them to stay in there for more than five minutes without me!
If this doesn't work I'm putting a lock on my side of the door.
In the end this project was actually pretty simple. I started by taking the chairs apart, then used the seat part to draw the shape I needed onto foam. I bought a large square of 1 inch thick foam for €5 and it did both chairs.
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| I bought my foam in Carew's bag shop on William St in Limerick, they have a random "foam room" at the back of the shop. |
I then did the exact same thing with my fabric, leaving a much bigger lip to allow for stapling. None of this needs to be exact, it won't make a difference to the end result.
I stapled the fabric down tightly, starting with one in the middle of each side.
In the meantime I had painted all the other parts of the chairs, so when it was all done I put the whole thing back together. You may have to work a little bit to get the seat to slide back in as it will now have to accommodate the fabric as well. To do this I grabbed my "persuader".......
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| I feel bound to point out that this type of impatient, agressive diy is not Gavin-endorsed. |
.....and gently tapped it back into place. And voila! A brand new, scandi-modern kids chair!
Much better I think.
For the table, Gavin took a piece of leftover plywood that was languishing in the shed (and very conveniently pretty much exactly the right size) and rounded the edges with a jigsaw to prevent eyeball loss.
My children are not graceful, and I like their eyeballs where they are.
I then painted it white and stared at it for a while trying to decide
how to jazz it up. Without spending any money. Or leaving the house.
I eventually gave up and let Gavin screw it to the table top while I faffed and decided what to do with it.
Which it finally did one day when I was trying to keep the monsters entertained on a rainy day. I decided to dig out the arrow stamp I made for Max's curtains and use that with some grey and orange paint to jazz up table. Pretty adventure-y right?
So I got out all the stuff....and instantly regretted it. Turns out stamping takes a bit of care and precision, two traits which my offspring are lacking thus far. They try and make up for it with enthusiasm and whining though. It doesn't help.
But in the end we got 'er done, with minimal tears (mine), no more than the usual amount of questions (upwards of 5 million-Emilia's) and only one tantrum (Max's-though it was as powerful as 3 normal tantrums).
When it was all dry I covered it with clear contact paper to protect the paint and make it easier to clean, and it was done!
What do you think? I'm not sure the kids even noticed, but there's definitely a lot more room for them to work with now, which means less fights, so yay! And the new colours make me happy.
Well, as happy as I can be while being micro-managed by a three year old.
I've already started in on updating our ensuite bathroom, I'll be sharing some of my plans for that next week ;)
