Do It Yourself Children's Furniture

Okay, so I tackled this project with lots of enthusiasm, but it was a bit harder than I expected.  I got the inspiration from Pinterest (as I often do), and decided to try to make a piece - A PIECE - of furniture for my kids. That is exactly what I did, but now I am thinking I need a table to go with this chair.  Also, my 6 year old son is asking for one of his own.  GAH!

The hard part about starting this project is finding the right boxes.  Unless you want a crooked chair or a slide,  you're going to want to use matching boxes for the arms.  Other than that you'll just need a nice, fat box for the seat, and a long box for the back rest.  After much digging (and bugging my mom to look through her boxes), a few weeks after I decided to do the project, I was finally ready to give it a go.  You MUST have good boxes, even if it means waiting.

Another key to making this project a success is reinforcing the seat.  Since numbers give me a headache, I did not measure out and fit in a nice X in the center of the seat (probably would have been best).  Instead, I took some pieces of cardboard, making sure that they were the height of the chair (Yes, I did do that at least...didn't want it to cave in), and I put them in in various directions closely resembling the X design I should have followed.  After that, I found some cardboardish paper stuff that came in a box my mom gave me.  I shoved that in all the open spaces.  Sloppy, but it worked!  And, who cares?  Once the box is closed you can't see it!!!  So lots of things could work to create a stable seat. 

As you can tell with my picture, I also made sure I taped all the boxes closed.  All the bumps and uneven places will be seen on the finished project, so I tried to minimize the bulges and bumps. 

The next step was fastening all the boxes together with my little bitty glue gun. I piled books on top to help get a nice, tight seal.  It took maybe 15 minutes.

I thought I took pictures of this next step, but apparently I did not.  

This mass of boxes went out to my deck along with Mod Podge, scrapbook paper and an old paint brush.  

I was not really happy with my finished upholstery job because I did not have enough of the rose paper I began with.  Oh well, I made the best of what I had.  I  have learned that gluing on bits of tissue paper will help smooth the seams and make, ehhem, problem areas less noticable.

 And this is what I got.

 All in all it was a successful project.  Even though she does not look pleased in the picture I took (haha), my daughter loves it.  It is holding up quite well too.  We have had it for over a month now and it is still going strong!  So...a table to match?????