High Chair With 9 Lives (or at least 3)

A long, long time ago, on a Wordpress blog far, far away, I blogged about this old wooden high chair I refinished. Back in 2009, my in-laws had found it second hand for me, because I really wanted one.  (I have really awesome in-laws.) At the time, I sanded it down and painted it black. Those were the dark ages before I discovered the magic of spray paint (I have no idea why this blog is starting to sound like a medieval fairy tale, its totally unintentional), and I painted it with some cheap basic black paint and a brush.


 It took f.o.r.e.v.e.r. All those little nooks and crannies, ugh! 

I really liked it when it was done! 


But it was weirdly sticky. The thing never dried! It stayed sticky for the next year or so that I used it. Everything stuck to it, it never looked clean, it was awful. I was happy to put it in the shed. 


Fast forward to 2012. I have another little guy who is outgrowing his bumbo thing and needs a high chair! (No worries, the bumbo thing is strapped to the chair very securely.)
So I dragged the high chair out of the shed and looked it over. Lookin’ kinda sad, huh?  
So I bought $3 worth of black spray paint from Walmart. I still had lacquer left over from the porch project we’re working on.
After scrubbing it with Dawn dish soap and roughing it up with a sanding block, 20 minutes later I had a freshly spray-painted high chair. Have I mentioned that I love spray paint? SO FAST!!! 


I got a little nervous though, because after letting it dry for a good hour, it was STILL STICKY! NOOOO!!! Thankfully, after a coat of lacquer, and letting that dry, it was no longer sticky. Phew! You can heave a sigh of relief now.


Now it looked better, but… I still wasn’t happy with it.
The finish seemed kind of dull, and I could see drops of Lacquer. (I love spray paint, but I’m not crazy about spray lacquer.)


SO I stared at it awhile. Because that’s what I do. I stare until an idea pops into my head. And its a good thing an idea DID come, because that poor high chair, through no fault of its own, was about to get the ol' heave ho. 


 If you’re still reading, its about to get good, so hang onto your hats. Or seats. Or whatever.


I wanted to hide those dull spotty spots, or at least distract from them. So I grabbed this fabric I bought recently for the porch project. Its vinyl outdoor fabric for 2.97/yard at Walmart, (and easy to clean I'm thinking.)
I also grabbed some scissors, tissue paper, a pen, and my Elmer’s spray adhesive.
Placing the tissue paper over the tray, I traced an outline of the tray.

I cut it out, and using it as a pattern, traced the same shape on my fabric.


I cut that out, then sprayed it generously with one of my favorite things:

Elmer’s Spray Adhesive. I let it sit for about 30 seconds, then carefully adhered it to the tray, rubbing out any air bubbles and making sure it was nice and smooth.
Since this particular fabric was vinyl outdoor fabric, the fuzzy cotton backing left me with a problem:

It turned out to be an easy fix though. I just took the edge of my scissors and traced around the edges, and the fray came right off.

I repeated these steps for the seat of the high chair, coated the whole thing once more with another layer of lacquer and:

Can you hear it? Those angels singing the Hallelujah Chorus??? Oh wait, that’s me. Because I don’t know about you, but I absolutely love it!






This project only took me about an hour and a half, not counting the work I did on it back in 2009. Does this make you want to go spray paint something or what? If I can pull this project off, believe me, you can too!


This post is linked up with The Homemaker's Challenge!