Our IKEA high chair got a makeover! We love our IKEA high chair (yes the $20 one!) and it’s extremely popular (for being so cheap and also so easy to clean!) but it needed a few improvements to work for us. First (and most importantly), it’s not the safest high chair for baby-led weaning. Without a footrest and cushion, a baby can’t get the proper body position to eat solid foods safely. If you want more information on positioning, read here! Second, I wanted to make it cuter! I love the simplicity of IKEA, but this high chair needed a little warming up. Sure, we could have bought a more expensive high chair that did all the things, but we wanted to do it on a budget! See below for our IKEA high chair makeover.
Here is the before:
Here is the after:
A few things that we did:
Legs – I added contact paper to the legs. Here is a link to the contact paper that I purchased. This was more difficult to put on than I anticipated, but definitely doable! I think it would work well to spray paint too (maybe a metallic gold?)
Footrest – My father-in-law made this footrest. I described to him what I wanted and gave him measurements. It will need to be lowered when she grows, but it’s working well now! Yeah Baby Goods sells footrests in a lot of pretty woods. Theirs have O-rings so that you can move it down easily.
Cushion with cover – I bought this cushion and this cover from Yeah Baby Goods. They have a lot of different options, but they are always out of stock! They have been restocking on Mondays, so that is your best bet to get one of these covers! I also think that if you know how to sew well, you could make one of these cushion covers very easily.
*Yeah Baby Goods recently created a line of cushion covers that promotes social justice and 100% of the profit will go to Be The Bridge, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the black community and training on racial healing, equality, and reconciliation.