turning a chair into a swivel rocker

As promised, I am posting a house project a day until this little one arrives.
Today is Nursery Part II.

See this little rocker?

It has quite the story...

First, let me start by saying that the nursery is very small.

Before we received news of Baby J, it had been our office.

Now our office is in the small nook of our living room:

(You have to get creative with a little house).

Anyway, fitting a crib, dresser and glider in the nursery was proving to be a challenge.

We already had the crib and the dresser, so that left the rocker.

We shopped around A LOT.

First of all, they are expensive!

Secondly, they are almost always HUGE.

Even if we were able to find one we liked for cheap on Craigslist or something, it probably wouldn't fit.

Thirdly, I wanted a white upholstered rocker, (I always want white everything), but I couldn't find one with a slip cover.

I refuse to pay over $500 for a white upholstered rocker that will be ruined if anything ever spills on it, (which is inevitable).

So, what were we to do?

Guess.

That's right.

  We did it again.

IKEA.

(I need to become a spokesperson for those people).

I got it in my head that I wanted the Ektorp Jennylund Chair.

The price was right and it matched our other furniture.

It was a smaller version of the chair we already have in our living room (smaller than any rocker or glider we had seen).

And it had a white slipcover.

We love our white chair, couch and ottoman.

Our friends are always scared to eat or drink in our living room but if you get something on them, you wash them, and absolute worst case scenario, if they do get stained, you can replace the slipcovers for super cheap.

There was only one problem.

It wasn't a rocker.

It was a chair.

Still, I wouldn't let it go.

Every time we shopped for gliders, I would say, "Why can't IKEA just sell gliders?"

One Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, Christian called me and said, "Meet me at my office at 3:30 and we'll go to IKEA to buy the chair you want."

I was confused.

 It turns out that after lots of shopping and no luck, he had started researching.

He figured out that we could just buy a swivel rocker base from this website, remove the legs to the chair, screw the base to the bottom of the chair and voilà!

So, there we were at 4:00 on a Friday, making the two and a half hour drive to IKEA (again!).

When we arrived, Christian said "let's check the 'As Is' section first." (as we have had some luck there before.)

We walked to that area and I squealed.

There is was, sitting right smack in the front, just for us.

What was wrong with it?

It was missing it's legs.

What are the chances?

We must be the only people in the world who were looking for that chair and planning to take the legs off after we bought it.

And all because of that one "flaw", it was marked at 45% off!

Oh man. 

I am sure you can picture how excited we were.

We rushed it to the register, paid for it and took it out to the car.

We should have left right then.

We had gotten the one thing we came for.

But we didn't.

Of course not. 

We'd driven all that way...

Here I am leaving the store a few hours later:

 

...and here is our car:

 

 

We need an IKEA intervention.

 (In all fairness, part of that was a desk we picked up for a friend, but yes, it was ridiculous.)

Two days later, our swivel rocker base arrived on our doorstep!

First, Christian flipped the chair upside down and cut the black fabric off of the bottom.

Next, he cut a piece of 3/4" plywood and a piece of a 1x2, (both left over from our recent kitchen remodel), to fit in the space under the chair.

 

The frame of the chair has a piece of wood across the back and the front, but the piece in the front is lower than the one in the back, so he screwed the 1x2 onto the front side in order to make a level surface for the plywood to sit on.

Next, he screwed the 3/4" plywood right into those two (now level) "support beams" that run across the front and back of the chair. 
(The thicker wood was necessary since there is no beam running across the middle of the chair for support.)

  

It wasn't quite tall enough for the slipcover to clear the ground, so he added two pieces of 2x4.

Finally, he screwed the base into the 2x4s.

 

Tah-dah!

It's the perfect size and super comfy, which is great because I am sure we will be spending lots of time in this chair in the weeks and months to come.

(See more pictures of the nursery here).