Thursday, February 19, 2009

A table for two

For my daughters first birthday I wanted to get her "toddler" presents that would take her into her second year and beyond so I suggested my parents get her a wooden table and chair set. They got her the Ikea Latt set which I'm sure many of you either own or have seen and contemplated buying. Ikea is a fantastic source of well designed and affordable children's furniture and decor, but things tend to be rather generic and instantly recognizable. That's why I love Ikea Hacker as a constant source of inspiration for what can be achieved using Ikea products and a little out of the box thinking. With that in mind I wanted to personalize our latt set and make it toddler crayon scribble proof. The Latt tabletop and chair seats are made of fiberboard and painted white, they claim to be wipeable but white and a box of crayolas don't mix very well and I didn't want to have to scrub it down everyday....

So I thought why not "reupholster" the top and and chairs with some cheery wipeable laminate.



To start I wanted to treat the wood, but am wary of using shellac or varnish on kids stuff because of the VOC's... so I decided to give it a little oil treatment using some natural olive lamp oil. I used a clean dry cloth to rub in the oil, two coats with a couple hours to let the oil absorb a little, which brought out a really nice sheen to the beech wood....




Next step was to "reupholster" the surfaces. I removed the table top and seats and covered them in laminated fabric (similar to oilcloth, a lot thinner though....). I used half a yard of Michael Miller Green Dandy Damask Laminate cotton. Half a yard was just enough, so your pieces need to be exact... pulled all corners taught and secured it with some double sided tape (do you see a recurring theme here?...) slid the top and seats back in, and voila!



I'm very happy with the finished product, the set really holds in own now and I love how nice and bright it looks, what do you think?

13 comments:

  1. this is adorable! I have the same table. Where would I find the oil you used?

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  2. I saw this on IKEA hacker, what a great job! I'd love to link if this if you don't mind.

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  3. Thank you for all your comments! As far as the oil I got mine from a Judaica store, it's actually intended for Hannukah candles but reg olive oil would probably have the same affect no need to splurge on extra virgin...perhaps at a health food store? I also found this link http://www.lehmans.com/jump.jsp?itemType=PRODUCT&itemID=474 . Feel free to full credit link to my blog!
    -Faith

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  4. These are fabulous! I was planning on getting the lack tables, adhereing fabric to the top, covering with bar coat...But these look great. Where did you get the laminate fabric?

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  5. Hi Sarah!
    I ordered the fabric from Gwenifers Attic they have an Etsy store, as well as an Ebay site http://stores.ebay.com/Gwenifers-Attic either way both etsy and ebay are great sources for fabrics. Try searching waterproof fabric... I originally wanted to use oilcloth but I think it would be too thick to fold over...maybe if you cut the pieces exactly to fit on top of the surfaces...
    -Faith

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  6. I love the oil rub and laminate fabric idea! I have the same table and did something similar. I just cut some festive contact paper (or shelf liner) and stuck it right on the fiberboard surface. :)

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  7. Hello Faith!

    I love the oil rub and laminate fabric idea! I have the same table and did something similar: I took festive contact paper (or shelf liner) and stuck it directly over the fiberboard. :-)

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  8. I did the same thing a couple of years ago with my kids' Latt table and chairs:
    http://bymyownhand.blogspot.com/2007/10/easy-ikea-hack.html

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  9. Fabulous! Ive been despairing about the state of our little ones table - I think this is the solution! Just awesome!

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  10. Love love love this! I linked back to you on my blog - hope that is OK!

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  11. This looks lovely, i am about to do the same with Cath Kidston oilcloth, and we are going to stain the wood a dark brown

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  12. i just bought the leksvik table, but i'm thiking about returning it to save money and doing this instead! it's so cute!! i'm curious how it's held up over the last few years?

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