DIY Play Kitchen

I know all of you have seen the awesome DIY play kitchens all over pinterest and like you I have been dreaming of making one of those since I first laid eyes on the idea. Unfortunately my kids are just to big to truly enjoy playing with a kiddy kitchen so thought I was out of luck. My luck turned around though when my sister asked me to make one for her kids for Christmas. I of course said YES after I finished doing the happy dance. I instantly began the hunt for the perfect entertainment center to start with. After about a week I found one on Craigslist for $20 and the couple even delivered it to my house for no additional charge!! Talk about a big score!

As you can see it is not in the best of shape but I figured for $20 I could totally make it work. Once it arrived though I discovered it was in worse shape than I thought. In the pictures I could tell the top piece was warped but I figured I could just replace that it it would be good to go. NOT!! The entire piece was completely warped all the way to the bottom so the doors didn't even shut properly. I started hunting for another one but was coming up with nothing and time was running out.

Got shoved into the corner for awhile

I was very discouraged on how and where to begin to make this into something safe and study for my niece and nephew which caused me to lose my mojo completely. After weeks of this thing just sitting in my garage my mom called to let me know she would be picking it up the Friday before Christmas to take to my sister. This of course caused the OH CRAP light bulb to go off in my head because I now had only a week to figure out what to do and get it done.

I knew the first thing I needed to do was replace the top shelf and put a sturdy backing on it so I took the measurements for those and headed to Lowes. I had them cut the pieces for me since even though I have a nice new table saw my work area is a little to small to cut down 4ft x 8ft sheets of wood. I used some thin plywood for the backing which was about $16 for the sheet (after they cut it down you do get to keep the extras so you still receive the whole sheet) and I went with particle board for the top shelf which was about $18 a sheet. Since the middle shelf was also warped pretty bad I also had them cut that from my particle board sheet. Thankfully I only needed one sheet of each and I even have a little left overs to put in my wood pile to use on future projects.

Once I came home with my perfectly cut down pieces I was ready to finally tackle this thing. Woohooo! The excitement did not last long though because once I removed the top and middle shelves and slide the new ones in place for a fit test I discovered just replacing those fixed no part of the actual structure problem. My husband came out and tried to help me brainstorm some more ideas but the only thing we could come up with was go buy more wood and just build the whole thing from scratch using the same measurements as the original. I sooooooooo did not have time to test out if I could even build an entire piece of sturdy furniture from scratch. I literally sat on the floor in my garage staring at this darn tv center for at least 3 hours. FINALLY the light bulb went off and I had a new perfect plan! I took measurements, drew out a blue print of exactly what I needed to do and ran back to Lowes (and yes I am on a first name basis with half of the employees at Lowes by now lol).

My vision was to build a base for the whole stand to sit on. This would level out the entire lower half, allow the doors to be realigned and prevent it from ever warping again since will now be supported in the center, front, back and sides. I used 1x3s and wood screws to build the base and then I took the entire entertainment center apart and screwed the bottom shelf to the base. Voila! It was now a perfectly flat and level lower half. I then started putting all the pieces back together using wood screws to secure the shelves instead of the half broken cam bolts it originally came with. I was able to use the original middle shelf as well so only the top shelf now needed to be replaced which was super easy.

 

Now that the whole thing is put together I can FINALLY get to the fun parts...prime, paint and make it look like a kitchen! I missed taking a picture before I cut the sink and oven holes but I'm sure you can imagine what it looked like without those holes lol. For the primer I did some research on the best kind to use for laminate furniture and this was HIGHLY recommend so here's what I used.

After the first coat it looked pretty rough.

Coat number two helped it to look much better.

I did three coats total which gave complete coverage. After the third coat was dry I sanded the whole thing down just enough to smooth any brush strokes out. Since this is a great "gripping" primer you can now use standard interior latex paint for it instead of the more expensive enamel paints. I picked up another smaller sheet of wood which I used to cut out a door for the "fridge" and the "oven". I thought it to be a good idea to make sure those pieces fit before I started slapping on coats of paint that I would want to get completely scratched up. I am so thankful I did check them because I needed to sand them down quite a bit so they would glide smoothly without rubbing the paint when they are opened and closed.

Once the doors were sanded down to perfect size I added some trim to fronts of them. I then made some homemade chalkboard paint by adding unsanded tile grout to the red paint. I put 2 coats of paint on everything and then sealed it with 2 coats of polyurethane. Make sure to use a fine grit sand paper before you begin to poly coat it. Once everything was all painted, trimmed and installed TA DA!!!!!!

The "fridge" door is a chalkboard that the kids can write on, the "oven" opens the way all ovens do and there is a shelf and hooks the kids can use to hang cooking utensils. The sink and cooktop I used came from the tiny play kitchen the kids originally had and they could not have been more perfect for this project. Both doors have magnetic catches so they stay closed.

There is plenty of storage for all kinds of pots, pans and food for sure. I think it came out perfect! One day I will make a window to go above the sink but I ran out of time so for now it's just going to stay white. This was an extensive project that took me about 40 hours and about $120 but it was so much fun and definitely one of the most rewarding things I have done so far! I do have a lot of the supplies I used left over so all in all I'd say I spent about $80 in what actually went on it.