Child proofing doesn't have to be ugly

I am sure one of things that many parents dread is the absolute hideousness (yup making it a word) of child proofing. Putting those weird covers on the door handles, giant air mattresses around your pointy furniture, and gates at every corner that just seek out stubbing your toes and laughing maniacally as you hobble away…or fall down the stairs.
Every single one of your lovely decorative items has been hoarded away into a cupboard that of course you are unable to get into without a key fob, key pad number and retina scan to open.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Child proofing does not have to be ugly or make your home look like you are crazy.
We were a bit slack on the whole child proofing thing. We just put some covers on a couple outlets, which now we can’t seem to remove (thanks IKEA) without a screwdriver. I wonder what the swedish words for Adult proof are…maybe that is the name of these covers. Otherwise our child proofing consists of moving the dog’s water bowl and putting a couple blockers in the bottom drawers. I am sure when she starts walking around on her own that we will need to put the locks on some other cupboards but until then we will just keep an eye on her.
One of the pieces of furniture that I was worried about from the get-go was our coffee table.
It is a sharp pointy death trap of corners. We tried putting some of those little corner covers on it, but I think I knocked it off almost every time I stood up so that was not going to work. It also has drawers on the side. That and it looked like our table had weird deformities on it. I thought there had to be a better way right? Off to Pinterest!

Searching….child proofing….really? Why not just get rid of the coffee table if this is the result.

Hmmm what about buying an ottoman instead….$250?! Shut the front door…no!
For that price I can make my own ottoman….wait..what? I could totally make my own ottoman! I made my own tufted headboard. I could totally do that, right?
Searching….DIY coffee table ottoman….hmmm seems like lots of cutting and gluing and nailing…ain’t nobody got time for that.
What if…..I just made a cover for the coffee table and then removed it when she wasn’t a hazard to herself anymore?
Searching….removable coffee table cover….really didn’t find anything other than a slip cover, which really wasn’t what I was looking for. I needed to add some cushion to the corners. Looks like I get to be a Pinterest Pioneer and be the first.
I decided that I was going to make a box to lay over the top part of the coffee table and then cover it.
Here are the steps I took:

First thing is that I measure the coffee table each side and the top so I knew how big I had to get the boards. I planned on getting peg board if I decided to be a masochist and do tufting. I knew that peg board was flimsy that I had to get wood to put in the corners to hold it a bit more stable so that was going to require that I add a few inches to each piece of the wood to compensate and have it still lay over the top of the coffee table.
Went to Home Depot and found a big sheet of peg board and had the guy cut all the pieces for me there! It was 7 cuts and he didn’t even charge me the $.25 per extra cut. So much easier that trying to it myself. Can’t even imagine how much time that saved me. I am not a big power tool gal ironically.

My Project Manager in the back was making sure I got all the items on the list…..

Peg Board $13

Wood dowel $3 - cut that at home easily with a hand saw.

Once I got home I found some screws and a screw driver and started putting it together.

This really did not need to be perfect at all as the entire thing was going to be covered in foam anyways. And the peg board already had some nice holes for me to work with. I hadn’t screwed the top piece on yet so it looks really wonky but once it was all screwed together it was pretty straight.

I found some zip ties in the garage just to put along the edges to put them together since, like I said before, peg board is pretty flimsy and just needed some stability.

The second part I did need a bit of help just to get it as smooth as possible. 4 hands were better than 2 for this part.

I bought 2 Mattress toppers from Wal-mart for about $11 a piece. We stapled each other individually over the frame and took care to make sure the corners were extra squishy.

Then I bought some quilt batting from Wal-mart as well for about $9 and wrapped that around to make it smooth. We stapled this as well and had to fold it a little bit in the corners.

Then in typical Heisick fashion we only finished half the project and left it without a cover for about 3 weeks….Inga really loved pulling on the quilt batting.

My mom is a sewing phenom, so she offered to help make the cover for it rather than just stapling the cover over it to make it more permanent. I don’t like permanent….especially with an almost one year old and bulldog.

She said we would make a slipcover with some elastic with a hem.

Basically the day ended up being my mom making the whole slip cover and I just watching the babes cruise around.

We followed the steps for this cover here

After we (mom) did that, I had to put the elastic all the way through the hem. We fitted it over the top and pulled as hard as we could and tied it tight.

Here is the finished product!

The cover is super lightweight and can easily be pulled up and removed the take off the cover and it is super soft. Inga won’t stop cruising around it.

The fabric we got was Sunbrella outdoor water repellent fabric so it will hold up nicely.

All in all, the entire project cost me around $65 and maybe a total of 3 hours to do the entire thing (not including our 3 week procrastination).

Once she is able to walk around and not look like a little drunk human we can remove it if we want….although we both really like it and might not.

Let me know what you think!

Julie

· Reply

October 17, 2016 at 5:15 AM

This is a lot like how we did our fireplace cover 🙂 🙂

Karen
· Reply

Author

October 18, 2016 at 12:49 PM

Oh really? That seems like such a cool idea too!

Savannah

October 19, 2016 at 1:15 AM

This is AWESOME, and such a neat idea!! I know a few kids who have really banged their noggins on coffee tables, and we just don’t have one so we don’t even have to worry about it, haha. We do, however, still have a looooooot of babyproofing to do. And considering my son is now walking, no, running around….we’re a little behind. Thanks for sharing! <3

Jackie

October 26, 2016 at 6:16 AM

What an amazing idea and it looks really good. You made me laugh with ‘sharp pointy death trap of corners’ - that’s so true, as soon as you have children your house takes on a transformation. I remember before I had kids a friend brought their toddler over, we were in the hallway talking and the toddler started to stumble towards my dining room. ‘No, don’t go in the danger room’ my friend called out - I’ve called it that ever since. 🙂

Emma me and b make tea

October 26, 2016 at 6:49 AM

haha this is fab! our table looked like your example!! with corner bits stuck all around it too. and the boy still whacked his head! love this explanation - very handy. and yep we would have procrastinated for ages too! found you on the fb group sybl 🙂

Erin

October 26, 2016 at 7:05 AM

I’m totally impressed how you transformed that table!! It really looks great and will be so much safer. The coffee table always worried me because of the edges and we have two glass panes. It looks so good!

Karen
· Reply

Author

October 26, 2016 at 8:45 AM

Thanks! Yeah we loved it so much we just kept it like that permanently.

Bianca A. Nunez

October 26, 2016 at 11:03 AM

this is intresting , thanks for the ideas I dont have kids yet but things to think about!

Elizabeth Ann

October 26, 2016 at 1:27 PM

Love your idea for a child proof ottoman! Also, good thinking on the outdoor fabric. Much tougher and can take a beating.

Katie

October 26, 2016 at 4:38 PM

These are great tips! When I was looking at baby proofing my coffee table I did a good search and came up with the same images as you. Definitely not what I wanted, so I actually took it in the basement until my child was old enough not to damage it. We also looked at ottomans, but the price…wowser! I currently have nothing in my family room.

Vaishnavi

October 27, 2016 at 4:20 AM

Wow. Love these childproofing tips, especially because these are DIY hacks. It is an exciting and purposeful activity too 🙂