This post is long over due. For Christmas we attempted the crazy. I had decided last September that it'd be fun to build a play kitchen for our littles.
Now, I decided it would be fun, but I knew that my hubby would be building it; which meant I needed to get him on board (aka: use mass forms of inception). And as you can see, the inception worked.
It was a beast, and guess what, I helped too. I took care of the painting...
So, even though we started collecting pieces of the kitchen starting October, we didn't get assembling until December. Which meant late nights and no pictures. Sorry. Not even a before picture of our actual shelves, which we got from Habitat Restore (which are awesome! basically a thrift store for random left over house stuff).
But here is a similar picture of the sink/oven shelf before - the cabinets on top. And below is from Young House Love's pre-kitchen fridge cabinet before. We just happened to get a similar one as theirs.
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| image via Young House Love |
DIY Kids Play Kitchen out of Old Cabinets
Anyway, like I said, there are no during pictures since it was Christmas and we were busy, busy. But I'll do my best to describe the process of everything.
I think the whole thing turned out spectacular, but the oven and stove top definitely take the price. My husband kept insisting that we needed to put real lights in the oven, but I was the debby downer and kept telling him he didn't have time. Well, thank goodness he doesn't listen to me all the time.
First off, he inserted a light socket into the inside of the oven and wired it to a light switch which he placed on the side of the oven. We then used an orange light bulb inside the oven (thank you halloween clearance)
For the stove top, we weren't sure if we were going to find a light to work for that, but then we came across puck lights at Lowes. We were going to glue an orange foam on top of the puck light to make it look like a fire, but then I realized that the top of the puck light comes off. So I was able to put the foam safely inside with the lid back on. Husband then wired the puck light to the same light switch as the oven light.
For the actual stove grates, we were lucky to find a lonely one at Habitat for Humanity Restore Store. We also found there these locks which we used for the stove knobs. They are perfect.
Felt eggs made by me. The Hide N' Squeak eggs we already had (seriously, all of our kiddos have loved this toy from an early age)
The fridge was the first to actually be done. We had to take the door off and re-position them (the cabinets were meant to lay the other way). Then we painted and added shelves. After thoroughly searching at the Habitat Restore, I was so happy to find enough handles to match on the fridge and under sink cabinet.
For the sink, we found a bathroom faucet from Habitat Restore (ya, we scored big time here!) and the actual sink is a metal bowl from the thrift store. The counter was a bit trickier. The husband used some left over plywood and cut it to go over both the sink and oven. We then taped off a section and only stained one side of it (the sink side obviously ; ). We wanted it to match our butcher block counter. To make it look like an actual butcher block, he added some small pieces of wood to the front of the plywood to give it a faux butcher block look.
Fridge - old cabinet from Habitat Restore $15
Sink and Oven - old cabinet Habitat Restore $10
Magnetic Board - left over metal sheet
Handles - Habitat Restore $8
Faux butcher block counter - left over plywood piece
Sink bowl - Salvation Army $1
Faucet - Habitat Restore: Free
Oven Grate - Habitat Restore $2
Puck Light - Lowes $10
Oven Light and Kit - $
Oven Knobs - Habitat Restore $1
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