Something I really wanted for our nursery is a chair.
Nothing fancy really. Just a nice, comfortable chair where I could feed and soothe the baby at bedtime. Turns out this was a bit more difficult than I anticipated.
You see, nursing chairs are big, and we were working to a restricted space. I didn’t quite realise how restricted it was until we were so generously given the Ikea Poang chair from one of my best friends. I can see why so many people recommend it for nursery use – SO comfy! Sadly, we needed to be more realistic and when we assembled it and got it in the nursery, it just dominated the room. Gutted.
Another mum I know, my lovely sister-in-law, recommended I look for a wicker chair. It’s cheaper because they won’t have the “nursing” label to it which so often bump up the price and they’re affordable, and come in all sizes. Sold.
I found one single wicker chair that fitted into our narrow gap – the Agen. Where from? You guessed it. Ikea.
It’s ideal for the space in the room, and fits me nicely, even in my current engorged state, with room for holding baby with a lovely big pillow or blanket.
With its accompanying cushion, it’ll be fab for those long night feeds and bedtime stories when the time comes.
The one thing I really can’t stand about the chair? It’s brown. Not that I don’t like brown wicker! But in our nursery the furniture is white. And white this shall be too.
I have read that spray painting wicker is the most time-effective and paint-efficient way of getting the job done, but after ages online I found very little useful information. Mostly, I found articles and videos on how to do it with an electric spray paint machine. Wow they look like a lot of fun. I could seriously go crazy with those. However, I think this may be a one-time project so won’t be investing in any expensive equipment for
I got my overalls on, a full mask, goggles, and plastic gloves. I know this sounds like overkill because I think on a normal day, I’d probably just wear something scruffy and spend hours scrubbing paint off my hands. But being pregnant, I wanted to be careful. In the end, Joe did the spraying so I just looked like a forensics expert for fun, it seems.
We used Platikote paint after a pretty good spray paint experience with our the metal fixtures on our dresser makeover. And according to the description, this white matt is suitable for use on wicker, so off we went.
It was really simply and only took a few minutes. Using slow and steady movements to apply the first coat, you could still see a little of the wicker brown shining through. It wasn’t totally even, and it was tempting to get closer to make it more opaque. But if you’re attempting this yourself, don’t! This leaves the paint to drip, drying in a gloopy mess. We left the paint for just less than an hour and hit it with a second coat.
Easy peasy job really and I much prefer the look of it in white. Turns out, that’s probaby why I couldn’t find any instructions on painting wicker. I suppose it’s all a bit obvious really. I’m a serial Googler though and love to check things out before giving them a go. Luckily, we had nothing to worry about.
I was thinking of re-covering the cushion but there is already plenty of pink in the room now, and I’ll probably end up popping a nursing pillow on here anyway. Hooray, I have my nursing chair! All I need now is a baby. But that’s a work-in-progress 🙂
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