Play Kitchen Make-Over

I picked up this adorable, old school play kitchen for $20. It was pretty beat from years of loving from another family, but I knew we could make it new again. I had the vision.

First thing to do was remove all the doors and hardware. We laid everything out on our front lawn and started by sanding the doors and surfaces. Sanding helps the finish to stick, but also gets some of the smaller, less deep gouges out of the wood. We couldn’t get them all out, but we got it looking pretty good and ready for paint!

I wanted to make kind of a retro kitchen, so I went with this fun blue. We ended up needing three cans of paint for the whole thing.

We attempted to be neat by covering the openings in tape and newspaper so the inside wouldn’t be painted. But…we ran out of newspaper and tape, so whatever.

Next up, spray paint! This was the most time consuming as we needed to do three coats to fill things in.

The cook top surface was pretty scratched up, and the sink insert did not come with it. We went through a variety of possibilities before deciding that a thin piece of board would work best. We covered the surface using caulk. I didn’t take a picture of it, but we got a paint that was textured so it almost gives the counter a stone looking feel. I would encourage you to cut the hole in the board before you paint it. You will mess up the paint job and some people won’t be able to get over it…

For the cook-top, we used the same material as the counter, but a smaller piece. It was a little bowed, so we put some weight on it to make sure it stuck down.

We used round pieces of wood purchased at the craft store as the burners and an old dog bowl (cleaned out of course) as the sink. We re-attached the doors, put on the new hardware and brought it in! Here is the finished product in place in the living room!

Word of warning. You may think it’s a good idea not to glue down the sink because you imagine stuff will get in it and you can take it out and clean it. Your child will quickly figure out how to remove it and climb through it, be happy for one second, realize he can’t get out and freak out. Just glue the sink down.

Levi loves it. He wakes up in the morning asking to play in the “kicken.” He mostly just likes to open and close the doors and hide stuff in there. But it entertains him and I love to watch him play! We’re happy too because when it was all said and done, the entire project cost us $57 – most of it was spray paint. So, it was less expensive than many pre-made kitchens, we upcycled something, and I got to spend the day making it with Micah. Win-win.