Play Kitchen = Labor of Love

I have yet to decide if this fits into the genius or idiot category, but we decided to build the kids a play kitchen 5 days before their birthday. We'd hemmed an hawed on this for months...should we spend money to buy really cute one? Should we make one? Could we re-purpose something that we already have? Should we get a cheap one? I think that I've seen most every play kitchen out there from the most basic kitchen manufactured ones, to the most intricate DIY ones, to the completely elaborate ones that I want for my own kitchen.

We wanted something that, you know, did things. As in knobs to turn and buttons to push. In the process of deciding what to do, I also realized that this would be a fixture in our house for a long time and for that reason, I wanted it to be something that would grow with the kids as well as something that fit into the rest of the house (as in, this thing might be sitting in our living room for large spans of time someday).

So, here is what we came up with. It was a labor of love and some late nights, but completely worth it. I'll put the details here as some of you have asked how we did it.

We started with two Ikea wall cabinets. The fridge unit is about 43 inches tall, in case you are wondering how tall this baby stands. And yes, they are strikingly similar to the kitchen that Matt built for us.


From here, you can see the legs on the unit. Right now, they are about 4 inches from the ground, but they can be raised as the kids get taller. And you can also see the little estate sale table along with chairs that a friend gave us that we refinished over the summer.

Matt built a box that would hold the stove as well as an oven door, complete with Plexiglas window. These were both attached to the cabinet frame. The pink was my addition as we all know that E loves her some pink.

We attached little puck lights in the oven and fridge as this is a continual point of fascination in our real fridge. They can click them on and off by pushing the light. Also, you can see in this picture that the oven opens down like a real one. Hinges on the bottom was something that we really wanted (did I mention that we thought a lot about this??)

Moving on, the stove was a bit more complicated as Matt wanted to make something that they could turn on and off. I was all for big black circles to be burners, but when he found a red rope light for a few bucks at the hardware store, I knew that we were going beyond spray painted coaster burners. First he built the box with a ledge in it to hold the rope light and cook top. I cut the Plexiglas to size and then spray painted painted everything except the concentric circles to get the look of a glass cook top. We were left with the question on how the kids would turn the rope light on, but for another few bucks Matt found a remote control adapter so that the unit turns on and off. They love it, though I do have to say that I keep the 'mote' up high as I don't want the light to be on for long periods of time. I'm not sure if a fire ever started from a rope light but I don't want to be the first one.

For the sink, Matt found some old outdoor water tap handles in his dad's workshop and brought them home, wondering if they could be used as burner knobs or water faucet handles. As we were piddling around in the workshop, I noticed some old copper piping. With the handles and the piping, we came up with this little faucet. Oh, and the sink is a brownie pan.

Lastly, the counter around the sink is a remnant from our butcher block counter in our kitchen. It was a beast to cut the hole out of the middle but in the end it worked wonderfully!

So there you have it. Even though we were both completely spent by the end of the week, we had so much fun figuring it out together.
Now, all this is just nice information unless the kids like it. Thankfully, they we hit the jackpot. We frequently have two very busy chefs that whip up delicious muffins and pots of steamy green tea for their momma and daddy. Well, that and some carrot, apple, fish, syrup concoctions that I find a little suspect.