If you’ve been following this blog awhile—we’re talking a year here—you might remember The Deceptachair. It’s a high chair. It’s a chair. It’s a walker. It’s a potty seat. It’s from a company called Storchenmuehle (inventors of the carseat) and we’re pegging it for early-to-mid-70s. The Deceptachair has held up well over time, but 30 years’ worth of baby food and schmutz had dingified the vinyl covering until it looked less than hygienic.
I knew from the start we’d need to add a safety belt, a hunch confirmed by the first few weeks’ worth of use: the Agent of Chaos found that she could turn herself completely around in the chair, and if she did manage to keep both of her fat little legs under the tray, it only took a bit of squirming to start the inevitable scooch-to-fall event that would confirm that buying a vintage high chair was a terrible idea. It was beginning to seem as though we’d need to invest in a new high chair.
She's annoyed she can't pick at the cover anymore. Doesn't she look furious?
Enter RocketMan and His ToolKit Of Tricks, and me with my twice-yearly urge to be mildly crafty, and Deceptachair got a makeover. First up: a safety strap. RM never takes pictures while he’s working (WTF, I keep saying; doesn’t he know the blogosphere NEEDS him?), so I’ll do my best to describe the process:
- Get clear plastic tubing, the kind that college kids use in beer bongs. Slit it lengthwise.
- Insert a light dog chain.
- Screw in a loop hook under the tray.
- Hook it in place.
- Realize it looks like you’re strapping your daughter in with a chain, and cover it all up in red decorative tape.
- Cross “Will you PLEASE make a safety chain so she doesn’t kill herself? Like, today? PLEASE?” off the whiteboard.
Yes, we have a whiteboard. If I could marry a whiteboard, RocketMan would have some competition.
Enter me, Queen of the Craft Fail. I’m not getting into all the swearing and futzing and muttered “I HATE yous” that went into the faux-upholstery; all you need to know is, I had some leftover contact paper, scissors, and an exacto knife. And now we have a newly covered Deceptachair, clean and fresh, and if we ever want to show the world its gray faux-flannel underthings, I’m pretty sure some Goo Gone will tear away all my work in no time at all.
How clever to use contact paper to cover it! We redid the seat on our vintage highchair too which was a lot easier since we redid all of the vintage chairs on our kitchen table.
She looks every excited about her redone chair. Well done!
she is so cute i can hardly stand it. i love this picture. maybe it’s because she looks like you and that make me warm and fuzzy…i can’t explain it but i love her! lol
I see she’s discovered the “puffs”. Sadie developed an addiction to those things. Luckily, Ian was unimpressed. Somebody needs to invent a rogue puff/cheerio gathering device. We are still finding cheerios in our apartment and furniture and we haven’t had a cheerio in the house for almost a year!
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