Vintage Stainless Steel High Chair Makeover

If you follow me on social media, you may remember a Salvation Army steal I posted about seeing on Instagram and Facebook page several months back. I passed up on a $25 vintage stainless steel high chair because at the time I didn't know if I'd be able to take it apart to add new covers, and I didn't have the time with the holidays approaching. My mother-in-law surprised me by buying it for me, and today I want to reveal Harris' new-old Vintage High Chair Makeover.

With the holidays past and long stretches of seemingly endless snow days in sight, I started plotting how I could give the high chair a new life. We have a plastic Fisher Price booster high chair that sits on one of our kitchen chairs, but I loved the stainless piece because it had character! And with seven cousins, having an extra baby seat is super helpful.

Aside from a little rust, it was in great shape. The cover was (at one time) white, and had a cool moroccan tile pattern. Over the years, it had yellowed and had a few tears, so I knew it was time for a replacement. Vinyl fabric was going to be a necessity...easy to wipe clean and pretty durable. The problem was that I wasn't finding many patterns or colors in vinyl fabric that were on trend. I also looked in all the local shops for a vinyl tablecloth, and the only only ones I could find were country grape festooned a la an episode of the Golden Girls in 1986.

Until I remembered that I had a cute-ish outdoor vinyl table cloth sitting in my kitchen sideboard. Like, for free.

So my friend Mandy came over, and we managed to unscrew the seats, remove them, use the gross grody old fabric for a template on the back of my new-ish tablecloth, and cut to fit.

Then we folded the fabric over the existing foam cushions and screwed them back onto the high chair.

Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

Vintage Stainless Steel High Chair. {mic drop}

Of course, the legs need some scrubbing to make 'em shiny again. But I will probably leave the chair base as-is. I want to keep the original character instead painting it. Like most folks, I go crazy for freshening things up with spray paint, but I really liked the vintage look to this guy.

So, to recap...high chair cost me $0 since my mother-in-law surprised me with it. The covering cost me $0 because I used a tablecloth I already had.

Not bad for a free makeover, huh?

My little guy has been pretty happy with it!

Do you have any vintage pieces in your home?

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