making the house safe - sharp corners on coffee table

[mckenzie]

8 month old DD is now crawling and althoguh we're ready witht eh stair gates etc that we had with DS, we've got different furniture now and we're struggling to do something with the sharp corners of teh coffee table (just at head height for when DD pulls herself up from crawling to sitting as we found ut this morning!!

We've got some plastic corners but they dont stick very well at all and also, the wood is sloping on the teble and so they dont work very well at all.

Any suggestions please as they are so so pointed they could do DD real harm if we dont cover them in some way?

TIA

We used pipe insulation for a while - looks strange but does the job.

not very attractive but what is more important? - could you try sticking bubble wrap or similar around each corner?

thanks for the ideas. Someone else suggested a tennis ball but I think DS might just keep taking it away.

my in-laws made a cover with thick paded foamy stuff, like a really thick table cloth.

We found with the pipe insulation that dd kept taking it away, but that was when she was much younger and rolling everywhere - we had it up the legs of the coffee table, and she kept taking it off and rolling away with it!

Once she was crawling she didn't bother trying to take it away, although in the end we did actually take the coffee table out of the lounge - not because of the sharp corners, but because it was in her way while she was crawling and she kept getting stuck. It hadn't been a problem while she was rolling, just when she started crawling.

you can get corner covers.... they are EXACTLY what you need, made for sharp corners just like that!

Ive seen them in those safety house box things that have cupboard locks / socket covers / video guards / loo locks etc and Corner covers

sure ive seen them in motehrcare as well, with all that sort of stuff

they're NOT expensive either!

that's what we have NannyL, plastic clear ones from Boots. But our corners are sloping so they don't fit properly. They keep falling off.

I used to put a small duvet over the coffee table when dd was first pulling herself up. Looked strange but fitted in nicely with the shamble of toys and generally messiness of the room once whirlwind dd had entered.

I might have a box of four unused covers for coffee table corners; CAT me I'll send them to you for free if I can find them.

The corner covers are useless - even if you don't have sloping corners they still fall off.

mmmm... not if you screw them in. Glue-on sort fall off readily, admittedly.

I probably just move the coffee table, you can't really use it for cups of hot drinks with little uns around kwim?

in 8 weeks she might be pulling up to standing on the coffe table and will carefully demolish anything you leave there. I would just "Store" it for a bit if I were you.

Ds2 has an inch long scar in the middle of his forehead from falling on to the corner of a coffee table when he was 2 - so do something about it now ! It was my friend's coffee table and she was so upset - she wanted to chop it up for firewood but I said that was a little extreme. Instead she wrapped the corners in so much bubble wrap, string and tape it was barely recognisable as a piece of furniture any more.

Perhaps put coffe table away for a while or swap for a more rounded version see if any childless friends fancy a swap.

We ended up getting rid of the coffee table as the plastic corners either fell off, or DS removed them!!

Unfortuantley he is very good at dismantling and demolition so any thing we put on the corners he spent the next few minutes getting it off!!!

I'm going to get some pipe insulation first and see what I can do with that and if not, I think it might have to be skribble's idea and we'll put it away for a while. DH seems to think we banished it to the loft when DS was a similar age.
Thanks for all your ideas.

BLU TAC

Spend £3 on chewing gum and make up a MASSIVE gobby ball of congealed gum and stick that on the corner ?

hub2dee - disgusting!

I'm a mean mummy. I did nothing to childproof my house, save a few socket things. It wouldn't have occured to me TBH. I didn't even have a stair gate. I am not saying this to be smug or do teh MN one upmanship, just to say you don't necessarily need to worry as much as you think.

I dont think i did a huge amount with DS as he was my first child as so I was pretty much always with him and watching. He certainly never poked things in the video etc (lucky us huh) so we never bothered with video locks and the likes. He also never showed any interest at all in coming into the kitchen and exploring the cupboards so that was never an issue.
This tiem round though, I can't guarantee watching DD all the time and also, we have some sharp corners on this furniture that could do her some serious damage so i want to prevent any accidents that might never even happen rather than cursing myself in hindsight.

Besides, you can get some lovely pipe insulators now, they'll be on Grand Designs next season!

thanks for your idea wigwambam - the pipe insulation is now in place. It looks very funky and will do a fantastic job.

I did everything when my ds was first walking about....but none of those corner things ever worked so i used bubblewrap!

Didnt help much though cos then he started taking the cushions off the sofa and ended up cutting the side of his eye on the wood bit at the back....typical!! They will get into anything LOL

we've put our coffee table away & replaced it with an IKEA BROMMA which is a footstool with a lovely padded & rounded corners, enough room on top for feet & magazines &, on seperate occasions, a tray with a coffee on. I think it cost £79