As conscientious and loving parents we purchased a monstrous but effective metal fireguard when monkeyboy first started crawling. It fits right around the edge of the very hard natural slate hearth. It has meant we have been able to have lovely fires in the wood burner without worrying about little hands getting burned or bumped heads when he was learning to walk. Later it saved a curious puppy from a burnt nose and paws.
However monkeyboy now is old enough to understand that the stove gets hot and Molly Moo is more into snoozing on the sofa. Time to get rid of the enormous fire guard.
The only thing is that monkeyboy likes to slide around on the slippy wooden floors. This means we can’t go completely au naturale as you can guarantee he’ll slip over and bump his head on the corner of the hearth.
I tried looking on pinterest but most of the suggestions involved creating cushion bench seats. This isn’t practical as you wouldn’t be able to use the fire and our hearth is only a couple of inches high. So I’ve had to get creative!
A foray into the garage (involves some precarious climbing and reaching) revealed some lengths of packing foam.
Packing foam as demonstrated by my cheeky assistant
Now as you can see its a ‘U’ shape. First job was to trim off one side so it was then a ‘L’ shape. We trimmed to length and doubled at the corners, as this was the main area of concern.
Next we got out my trusty gluegun. Mine is a cold melt which is safer but monkeyboy was sent to play trains with the offcuts to avoid any incidents. I’m enough of a liability on my own!
Right hand corner glued
Left hand corner glued
After I had stuck everything into one piece I then worked out how to best use my material odds and ends to cover the rather bright blue. To match in with the lounge colour scheme I used a random bit of leatherette and a couple of bits rather pretty but obscure shaped dark red silk. I figured the leatherette was going to be a bit harder wearing so put that in front of the fire, with the silk to the sides. It was a shame there wasn’t enough leatherette to cover the whole thing but that’s the nature of scraps.
The leatherette was quite easy to gluegun onto the foam. As I went I stuffed some wadding inside.
Leatherette section completed
The silk was quite as obliging and half way through the spring went in the trigger of my gun. This meant I had to push the glue sticks through by hand.
The corners were quite awkward
This was made more difficult because of having to go around the corner. So at one point I had to use 2 hands on the gun and somehow gather and stick the material before the glue cooled too much. Needless to say I ended up with glue on my hands, jeans and the floor. Luckily it mostly came off.
The end result - an attractive fire place safety cushion thing
I’m rather chuffed with the final result. It’s not only better to look at than the metal fireguard, it’s made the room feel a lot bigger without compromising on safety.
The chaotic life of the toad 