Rocking the Night Away

Upholstered glider rockers are so expensive and a very necessary necessity in a nursery. I got quite a shock when the average cost of these "gliders" were $700-$900. I had my eye on this white slipcover glider from Pottery Barn at a lovely cost of $1,168.86 with shipping.

Not gonna happen in our nursery on our budget. I hit every store in town, ebay, craigslist and nothing was coming to fruition. I really wanted a comfortable (and cute) chair for the nursery and was not gonna give up.

Then one afternoon I went to visit my grandmother and she was getting rid of an old swivel rocker. I took it not knowing if it would work or not, but the poor chair was about to end up in the trash or on the side of the road. After looking into the outrageous cost of re-covering a chair, I thought the next best thing was to use it for its parts. More preciously it's swivel mechanism on the bottom, I got the bright idea to attach it to a newer stationary chair and make my own cute glider rocker.

I purchased this little slipcover chair from ikea for $199 and here is the story of how it is now a lovely swivel rocker for those 3am parties with baby G.

(JennyLund Chair in Blekinge White)

Seriously this was so easy its funny......

1. I removed the swivel mechanism from underneath the old chair.

2. Turned the new Ikea chair upside down and removed the black dust cover from underneath the chair. The chair came with the legs not attached so I just put the legs aside.

3. Reinforced the underside of the chair to make sure I had a sturdy base: Cut and screwed a block of wood 3/4" or thicker, to fit the demissions of the chair frame. I made sure the wood block was flush to the rail edges and used screws to attach it to the frame of the chair.

4. Screwed the swivel rocker base onto the center of the chair. I used the black dust cover from the old chair and stapled it around the swivel.

5. Turned upright and put the slipcover on the chair. (A good tip in this project is to make sure your chair has a skirt to the ground to hide the swivel rocker hardware.)

I am beyond happy with the outcome and its one more thing to knock off the list of things to do for the nursery. Now back to painting as you can tell with the samples on the wall.

And we still had a happy ending to that old granny rocker that saved the day. I attached the legs from the ikea to the old chair and it now lives at my other grandmothers house. She fell in love with the royal purple color and wanted to keep it.