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?