Frugal DIY Play Kitchen!

For little Man’s 3rd birthday party I decided that a play kitchen would be a good addition to our playroom! I didn’t have a lot of money to spend (none really) but I still wanted it to be cute! I found a possibility on etsy.com for a cardboard one and bought the PDF. I loved it but it required a lot more materials than I had available at the time. So I looked around and found some materials that I thought would work.
I first saw this end table that I was using as a cable box stand and nothing else. I grabbed that and replaced it with my file cabinet as the cable box holder lol
I knew I needed room for a sink too so I found an old drafting desk that the top ‘lift up’ portion of the desk was damaged on one edge but was long enough on the ‘good’ part to cover the top of the end table and then have overhand for the ‘sink’ portion.
So I had my handsome hubby cut down the desk top to the right size, cut the hole for the pie plate sink and screw it on to the top of the nightstand- lining up the edges. I caulked/used wood filler on the seam where the top of the end table and bottom of the wood came together. Then I taped off the half that overhang with painter’s tape and newspaper and spray painted the entire nightstand/remaining portion of desk top white. It took a couple coats and I didn’t do the back, the inside or the side under the over hang since those wouldn’t be seen. The reason I did this is that I wanted it to have some separation between the  stove/oven side and the kitchen side. It ended up looking like the sink is in a butcher block countertop- love it!

Next I took off the tape/newspaper and placed the pie plate in the hole. It has a lip and we measured the bottom of the plate (which is a bit smaller than the rim) so it fits in tight and the lip keeps it from falling all the way through.
I traced a saucer four times onto the ‘stove’ side of the kitchen and filled in the circles with black acrylic paint. Handsome Hubby drilled some small holes and fitted them with these little metal pegs I found laying around and that’s what we used to hold the ‘oven’ knobs on with. The knobs do come off but I didn’t want to glue them because I wanted them to be able to spin. I wrote the ‘temperature’ & ‘on’ ‘off’ with a thin line Sharpie.

Then hubby measured and cut plywood to fill the front of the end table for an oven door and he cut a ‘window’ in the middle for the oven window. I spray painted that white and we attached it to the kitchen with hinges at the bottom, magnetic tape to hold it closed and upright and a handle to pull it open with.  The ‘window’ of the oven is covered from the inside with a sheet of transparency film and it is just taped on using packing tape (so it’s clear and blends in). I might hot glue it on later but for now it works!
 

After that we just screwed the handles through the overhand/old desk top part of the kitchen for faucet handles and used Gorilla Glue to attach the wooden J (I painted it sliver first) upside down to look like a faucet. I would have loved to do a screw up through the bottom of the over hang into the bottom of the J but when we tried it started to split the J- so glue only was what worked for us!

I used sticky backed Velcro on the edge of the over hang and sewed the matching Velcro (using sew on Velcro obviously lol) to the bandanas to make a sink ‘skirt/curtain’
And that was that! I had everything but the hinges, handles, J and knobs on hand. The oven ‘knobs’ were free and the rest was all $1-$5 each.

 


So here are the materials you would need to make your own. I have linked to similar or the same products where ever it was possible!

Materials: End Table(I used one similar to this- only mine had two shelves)    
Pie Plate with rim (but no handles) (mine came in a pack of 2 and was similar to this)
wooden or paper mache letter “J” (mine is wooden- this link is for paper mache because I couldn’t find the right ‘font’ of J that looked like a faucet)
Kitchen or Bath Replacement Faucet Handles (mine are similar but couldn’t find them online)
Acrylic Black Paint
Metallic Spray Paint -Silver
Satin White Spray Paint
Replacement Oven Knobs (mine are actually from an old Helicopter)
Plywood (got mine at my local Lowe’s)
Sharpie Fine Point Permanent Markers
Wood to form ‘countertop’ (the same width as your end table from front to back and then about twice as long-mine came from the top of an old desk that part of the wood was warped. We cut off the bad part and used the good part)
Solid Color Bandanas - (Whatever Color you want)(mine are leftover bandanas from the Pirate Birthday party!)
Small Hinges (you’ll need at least two to attach the oven door with)
Magnetic tape (you can get this at Wal-mart or a craft store also)
Kitchen Cabinet Handle (this is similar to the one I used but I would have loved to use this kitchen cabinet long handle because it is longer-more like an oven handle)
Velcro (both sticky backed & sew-on)
Transparency Films
Packing Tape
Gorilla Glue
Screws

I hope you all find some interesting materials to make your own play kitchen! Just know that you CAN do it without spending a fortune on those wooden play kitchens they sell!
In fact, I’m not the only one who has made their own play kitchen.

Have a Happy Day,

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Starting to think about School!

If any of you know me personally you know that I am still deciding on whether or not to home school my son, at least for the first few years. This is a discussion my husband and I have been having since D turned 1 last summer. We pretty much decided to go ahead and just keep checking each year and see if this is still something we want to do.

Anyway on that note: I made D a cute little fridge magnet matching game about a month ago and he LOVES it! YAY!
Here are some pictures of it!

I used a printable matching board sheet from here called "On the Farm" and all I did was print it twice, laminate one as a whole sheet & added a sheet of magnet to the back, cut the images out of the other and laminate & add magnet sheets to each individual image.
This is was before I went and got my Xyron 9" Creation Station and now I could do the laminating and magnetizing all at ONCE! YAY!

Then just stick it up on the fridge and let the matching BEGIN!! YAY!

Notice the ugly '70's brown laminate flooring? Yeah, we peeled it up and VOILA! We can now say we have ORIGINAL hardwood floors in every room on the first floor! I did the happy dance and made my hubby join me! lol!

Have a nice day!
-K

Coffee anyone?

Hi all, I finally got around to 'creating' and not just 'spring cleaning' last week. Here is my finished gift for my aunt who recently did her kitchen in a coffee theme!

(and if she is reading this: *shhhh! The *surprise* kitchen towels to match are coming soon!*)

Supplies are listed at the bottom!

I started off with flat backed clear glass pebbles:

Then I made a stamp "mask" from my stamped image:
(for those of you who don't know, a mask is made on a scrap piece of paper and you cut away the part of the image you want to keep, leaving the parts you don't want, then you stamp OVER this 'mask' and you only get the part you want when you lift up the mask)

This is what was left of my image when I lifted my mask, just the cute little coffee mugs & steam!

Here is the final magnet
(the glue has not finished drying here that is why it is a little cloudy, make sure whatever glue you use is A. STRONG since you will be gluing the cardstock to the pebble and the magnet will only be adhered to the cardstock-not the pebble! and B. Dries CLEAR, since you put glue on the back of the pebble then the image gets glued to the bottom of the pebble!)
(Notice the brown ink on my fingers? I am NOT a 'clean' crafter! lol!)

And while this has nothing to do with my craft o' the day: Here is my little stamp "store" that greets me as I walk in my craft room! YAY!
(and btw, I need about 30 more of these shelves to even begin to hold my rubber stamp collection...I believe my husband is happy I am collecting more clear stamps now and storing them in cd cases! lol!)

Supplies:
Stamps: 2008 Holiday Tag Collection Papertrey Ink
Ink: Dark Chocolate Papertrey Ink
Glue: Aleene's Original Tacky glue
Card stock: Vintage Cream Papertrey Ink
Other: Adhesive Backed Magnet tape- (I got mine at wal-mart but there was no brand name on it, but I found some on JoAnn's too!), Glass pebbles- Marble Accents Jumbo Clear Gems- JoAnn's