My original plan called for an oven door below the stove. That didn't end up happening. But the boys never noticed that anything was "missing" from their kitchen. Most play kitchens that I researched when I was planning this project also included sinks. My past experience showed that my boys would not use a sink enough to justify the work that would involve. Also, on most of those kitchens with sink there is no counter space. Preparing the food is half of the fun of pretending to cook. Where exactly where were they suppose to prepare the food with no counter space? Especially since I had purchased for another one of Early Bird's Christmas presents a Cuttable Fruit
set. So leaving out the oven door and a sink, I was able to complete this project with NO cutting and NO drilling the particle board, which kept the price really low and manageable. |
| 6 months later |
For the stove top, I used regular acrylic paint and painted on burners. Unfortunately, that didn't hold up very well. When I eventually find my paint I'm going to re-paint the burners and then cover that part of the kitchen with contact paper and see if that stays on well. |
| Little Star Detail |
I thought the curtains under the sinks in the play kitchens I found on Pinterest were super cute. I didn't have a sink, but that didn't mean I couldn't have an under-counter curtain! Keeping in mind that I was going for cheap, fast/low effort, and no-sew, I purchased a blue washcloth at Walmart ($0.50?) that was the perfect size for my space. I used puffy fabric paint to add a star decal to the washcloth, purely for decoration. On the back of the washcloth I used cheap ribbon (already had some, but you can get it at Walmart for $1) and fabric glue to make four strips to hang the curtain from.
I found the wooden dowel in the painting/craft section in Walmart for less than $1, and the adhesive hooks in the picture hanging section (I think?) in housewares for less than $2/6-8 hooks. The small dowel turned out to be the perfect diameter for the hooks, so they are stuck quite firmly in place. The dowel was too long for the space, and I didn't have a hand saw, so I used my PVC pipe cutter and it worked just fine.
And that's all it took! I can't remember (six months later) how long it took to finish this project, but, not including waiting for the paint and glue to dry, it took very little total time! It took more time for me to walk around Walmart and find all the pieces for the various parts of the kitchen since my list was vague and unorganized than it did for me to put it all together. The boys love it and Early Bird plays with it a lot. Since the pieces aren't all stuck together it survived the move extremely well. This whole project cost me less than $20 for everything (because I already had the shelving units.)
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If you haven any questions about the process or if I left something out, leave a comment and I'll answer your question to the best of my memory.
If you made a play kitchen of your own based or inspired by any of these ideas, please let me know so I can share what you did!
Here's a link to my Homemade Play Kitchen Pinterest Board for other ideas that inspired me and some play food ideas that I still want to try someday.
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