DIY Play Kitchen Fun

I finished it just in time.  Luckily, the kids were with their Dad’s family on Christmas Eve, so I had an entire day to work on all the details.  So many details.  The actual build of the play kitchen was easy and all the individual pieces were completed in plenty of time before Christmas, but with both kids home all day on Christmas vacation it was impossible to work on all the finishing details during the day.

Originally, I had wanted to do something similar to this…

Image courtesy of SAS Interiors

But had absolutely no luck finding a 2 drawer nightstand in time.  That’s even after enlisting the help of my garage/estate sale addicted mother to help in the search.   Which was really a bummer, because I honestly thought it would be a cinch to get my hands on one.  The major catch was finding one on the cheap.  I knew building one from scratch was going to be  fairly inexpensive, so the nightstand would have to be priced on the low side to make it worth it and we just didn’t have any luck.  So on to plan B.  Plan B was to build the Simple Play Kitchen from Ana-White.com.  I know, I know I might possibly have mentioned her site before.   I went with the narrow fridge because everything had to fit under her loft bed and space is definitely limited.

My biggest and I think only change to the plans was to use 1/2″ plywood in place of most of the 1 x 12′s.  My local HD cut a sheet into 11 1/2″ strips and that supplies enough for this whole project and the stepping stools I built earlier.  That change did result in a few cut changes, but nothing major.  Everything was assembled with nails and glue, no screws.

The almost bare Play Kitchen.  I painted the interior of the oven before realizing that there were no before pictures.  Yikes!

The painting seemed to take forever, since it was going on at the rate of one coat each night and with it being too cold to paint outside in the garage everything had to be dragged in and out each night.  That got old real quick.  Once all the painting was finally completed, it was time to move on to the fun stuff…like decorating!

I’ve seen some truly awesome, completely decked out kitchen projects and I was so tempted to follow along those lines, but my budget just wouldn’t allow it.   So earlier in the month I began my search for a the little accessories and here’s what I found… the knobs used for the fridge, stove and sink are all from one package of little unfinished wooden toy craft accessories found at the local JoAnn’s.  With a 40% off coupon they were around $2.50.  I sprayed them all with a little silver spray paint that was already on-hand from a previous project.  The knobs on the stove and sink are screwed in, but not so tightly that she can’t still turn them.  The stove grill was made from gluing two pieces of a dismantled wooden serving tray together.  It was a find from a local thrift store and the two pieces just happened to fit perfectly.  The $4 find was also sprayed with some silver spray paint.

The sink itself is a little metal pail also from the thrift store and was a whopping $.99 cents.  And, the faucet is actually spray painted PVC pipe.  That idea came from SAS interiors and her nightstand kitchen I mentioned above.  The P trap is attached with some liquid nails glue and seems pretty well locked down.  We’ll see if it stands up to the rough and tough play of my children.

The little sink skirt is actually a piece cut from a vinyl table cloth purchased much earlier in the year.  It had been  marked down to $1.50 and I just knew it would have to come in handy somewhere.  A wooden dowel from the dismantled serving tray was used as a curtain rod, so no additional expense there.  All the paint was already on-hand.  The main color is actually a mix of two oops paints.  My daughter loves everything pink and purple, so this color came out just perfect.

I’m really happy with the end product and my daughter’s squeal of delight upon discovering it all setup under her bed makes all the hard work worth it.  Next on the list is to add some shelves above the sink and stove for storage.  She needs more room for all the little dishes and play food received during Christmas.