Choosing a children's wooden highchair

In our time stores offer a huge selection of all kinds of furniture, including children's furniture. But are you sure of its quality? And the price is often too high. Do not be sad, you are quite capable of making a highchair with your own hands, without spending a lot of effort and money. The article provides several examples of the manufacture of children's chairs of various configurations.

The first advantage of making a highchair / table yourself is that this piece of furniture will be most convenient for your child, because when creating a sketch and drawings, you will proceed from its parameters. The second big plus is the cost, since the purchased product will cost you much more. Third, you test the strength and reliability directly during the manufacturing process, that is, you will be sure of the quality of this product.

You can decorate the finished furniture according to your taste or at the request of the child., and not be content with those colors that are offered by stores of ready-made children's furniture. The downside is the time and effort involved. If you do not have free time, the work schedule is too busy, and you have a misunderstanding with carpentry tools - you better buy a solid ready-made model.

Children's chairs conditionally can be divided into 3 types:

• high chair for feeding;
• transformer (a combination of a chair with a table that can be converted into various shapes);
• normal child's chair.

The color and design depend on your imagination and taste. Remember first of all about the convenience and reliability of your design. It is better to create a simple, sturdy wooden chair than to swing at an original and unstable model. To decorate your product, you can pick up bright fabrics for upholstery of seats and backs, paint them with paints in the form of animals, plants, scenes from cartoons (this requires either stencils or ready-made stickers) and the like. It will be much more interesting for a kid to use a colorful fabulous chair, sit on it at breakfast or play.

The choice of material from which you will assemble a piece of children's furniture is also of great importance. You can get by with plywood and chipboard, but these building materials are not very durable. Look for a hardwood product such as pine.

Dimensions for self-production need to be selected specifically for your child, but there are certain standards. The ideal backrest height for a highchair is 55 cm and the distance from the floor to the seat should be 32 cm. The seat width is between 27 and 35 cm.

First of all, remember that the main criterion for children's furniture is its safety for the child. It must be smooth, durable and stable. Sharp corners, cracks, gaps and crevices are unacceptable. Self-tapping screws, wooden thorns, nails, dowels can be used as fasteners for the parts of the highchair. For reliability, the fasteners of each joint must be duplicated. Naturally, before you start making a children's chair with your own hands, you must first draw sketches, and on their basis - drawings indicating all the dimensions of the future product.There are a great variety of models of this popular children's furniture. Consider the simplest and most common designs.

To make it you will need:

• pine bars of different sizes;
• pine planks for the seat;
• fasteners.

The dimensions of the wood planks for the rear legs are 30 * 30 * 550 mm - 2 pieces.

For crossbars:

• top 19 * 41 * 165 mm - 1 piece;
• carved 14 * 41 * 165 mm - 1 piece;
• medium 14 * 29 * 165 mm - 1 piece;
• bottom 14 * 29 * 165 mm - 1 piece;
• side and side bars 14 * 29 * 177 mm - 4 pieces;
• front and side bars 14 * 29 * 195 mm - 2 pieces.

In front, the upper crossbar must be rounded so that the child is not injured by sharp corners. The height of the lower edge of the middle bar must match the height of the upper edge of the seat. First, the rear legs are fastened to the crossbar. Then connect the front pair of legs and the crossbar. Then they are fastened together with side beams and all tsars. The seat is mounted last.

A transforming chair is a combination of a chair and a table that can be converted into different shapes by simple actions. It can be used as a table-chair for feeding, as a school desk, and as a table for games. It is very convenient for small rooms, as it can be folded compactly.

Highchair details:

• legs 39 cm long - 4 pieces;
• rounded corners - 4 pieces;
• top slats 22 cm each - 2 pieces;
• crossbars 34 cm long - 2 pieces;
• cross slats 30 cm each - 3 pieces;
• seat base (can be made of plywood 18 mm thick) 20 * 30 cm - 1 piece.

Table components:

• legs 50 cm long - 4 pieces;
• strips of 41 cm - 4 pieces;
• cross slats 34 cm each - 4 pieces;
• table top (plywood 18 mm thick) 45 * 38 cm - 1 piece.

All parts will be fastened with glue. But to increase the strength and reliability of the product, it is necessary to use 20 * 50 mm wooden dowels for fasteners and they are quite simple to make yourself from a plywood sheet of 8 mm thickness. For dowels, grooves are made in the places where the parts are fastened, in which they should be located. Do not forget to apply glue to all joint surfaces before installing them in the grooves.

This is how the side parts of the chair are mounted. It is important to let the glue dry completely. Then sand them off until smooth. Cut the seat and back of a highchair 250 * 300 mm from 3-4 pieces of plywood, connected with an adhesive layer. Round off all the corners. Foam rubber is glued to one side as a softening pillow, which is then covered with a fabric cover. Covers are fixed with metal staples.

Start assembling the highchair by connecting the finished sidewalls with planks. Everything is carried out according to the scheme described above (dowels + glue). The seat will rest on the slats, so you need self-tapping screws or cylinder dowels to secure it. Then install the bottom and back rails. Attach the back to the back bar. Let the chair dry so that the glue grips all the connected parts well.

The assembly technique of the table top is no different from that for the chair. First mount the sides of the table and sandpaper, then connect them with crossbars and sand again. Then attach the countertop itself, sand it and varnish it several times.

Feeding chair, it can be converted from a regular old chair with a backrest. It is great if its legs are fastened with additional crossbars, and it itself is stable and reliable. The chair must be turned over. The back of the chair will become the front legs of the highchair.From the upper points of the front of the future feeding chair, obliquely fasten long strong slats (or bars), which will become the back legs. We fasten all the legs with crossbeams. The seat, back and shelf for setting dishes with food are made of sanded boards or a piece of plywood. The seat needs a cushion.

Of course, the most important thing in children's furniture is reliability, stability and convenience. But don't forget about aesthetics. Kids love bright, beautiful things. So take the time to paint the wooden surfaces with stencils and then varnish several times.

It is more practical to make the upholstery of the seats and backrests from artificial leather - it will be easy to wash off porridge and other scattered food residues (while the baby learns to eat on his own). All wooden parts are sanded before assembly with sandpaper to perfect smoothness so that the child does not get splinters. When fastening parts with self-tapping screws, their caps must be deepened and closed with plastic plugs.

On the smooth surfaces of tabletops and seats, you can glue colorful stickers with the characters of your favorite cartoons, and cover the top with a dense self-adhesive film or varnish so that the child does not tear off the pictures he likes. And stickers have one unpleasant property - over time, their edges begin to peel off and wrap up, which spoils the appearance. Below are some examples of ready-made children's furniture.

For information on how to choose a highchair for feeding, see the next video.