In case you missed it the results for upcycle are up on SYTYC. I came in 3rd place with my upcycled play kitchen. I have known I wanted to do one of these for Bradley since I was pregnant with him. The kids had a plastic one when they were little and I still had some of the food toys (not as much as I thought), but the plastic one just did not hold up well with active toddlers so I knew I wanted a nicer one made of wood for Bradley, but I didn’t want to spend a fortune so why not make one. So I did just that.
I found this entertainment center on Craig’s List for $10. They even gave us a TV with it but we have it to someone else. Adam helped me with this project a good bit. We started by taking off the backing and removing the drawers and shelf. I was hoping to use the shelf for the bottom since under the drawers was open, but it wasn’t quiet big enough. I bought a piece of wood for the bottom. Then we used a piece of wood we already had to divide the bottom in half. Then we cut the shelf to make the oven door.
Once we had all the wood cut Adam added some screws in it to tighten it up. It was pretty wobbly before we did this. Then he cut out the hole for the sink and the faucet. Then I puttied all the holes and deep scratches in the wood. Adam and I sanded the entire entertainment center till it was smooth.
I bought some new hardware for the refrigerator door and the oven door at Lowe’s. I actually made several trips to Lowe’s before I had the hardware worked out. Adam predrilled the holes for the oven door and refrigerator door. The new handle for the refrigerator required two holes instead of one.
Once we were done predrilling all the holes I put two coats of grey tented kilz on the entertainment center. The next part was the hardest. I decided I wanted the kitchen to match my other items in the sunroom, you can see them in my kid friendly decorating post. At first I thought I wanted to paint it black and use red, blue, green and yellow to accent the kitchen. But then I realized the accent colors wouldn’t cover over the black very well. Although I didn’t think about that till after we went all over town looking for Valspar black paint. The Lowe’s closest to our house was out of base c and had been for weeks. I had been in Lowe’s a few weeks before this project wanting to buy some black paint for another project so when I came back the lady was nice enough to look and find out how many each other Lowe’s in the area had of base c. Anyway, after deciding black was not the way to go I decided I was going to paint each section a different color. I started by painting the stove area with a coat of red. But while it was drying I decided that was tacky and was not what I wanted either. So I reprinted it with kilz and decided I’d use a base color of white and accent with red, blue, green and yellow. I had almost a full gallon of white from when we built Bradley’s bedroom and it was semi-gloss as well. Perfect!! I put two coats of white paint on the entertainment center. Then Adam used painters tape and taped off the oven door, the refrigerator door, the stripe across the top and the window. I had also bought a piece of wood for the backing but I didn’t attach it till after all the painting was done. Originally I wanted the window to have a black frame and plus sign so it would look like a window but then I decided that I’d probably mess up the paint so I simply went with the black window frame. I painted several coats of paint on the refrigerator door, the oven door, the stripe across the top and the window. If you remember when I bought these colors a while back I bought flat paint so instead of buying more paint I used them and when it was dry I put a coat of mod podge over it to give it the glossy look.
I also bought some wooden wheels from Hobby Lobby and I painted one red, one blue, one green and one yellow. I wanted them to spin like real knobs so I got some washers and nails to attach them. Not my best idea but it worked. We will probably figure out a better way to attach them later.
For the oven eyes, I used my Cricut to cut out some black circles. I cut out several sizes ranging from 3 to 6 inches. I believe I ended up using the 4 and 5 inch circles for the eyes. I wanted it to look as real as possible so I made two different sizes. I used mod podge to attach the card stock to the entertainment center.
I bought a metal dog bowl and faucet at Wal-Mart. Originally my plan was to buy a new faucet for our kitchen since it leaks and use the one in our kitchen for this project but they are expensive and it was out of my budget for this project so I went with a smaller cheaper one for the play kitchen. At first I put a bead of glue under the lip of the bowl and put it in the hole we cut, but slowly the glue was dripping and making a huge mess under the sink. We added a bead of white caulk around the top of the bowl and along the seams of the wood. Some of them had small gaps from the wobbliness of the entertainment center. I felt like this really helped give it a finished look. Then we simply attached the faucet with the pieces that came with it.
Once all the paint was dry we attached the oven door and refrigerator door. The oven door also has a magnet at the top to help hold it together when it closes. Then we attached the backing.
I wanted a curtain to hide under the sink but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to attach it. I had the idea of a dowel in my head but I wanted to be able to remove it too. I had these red hooks from when I was going to hang a dowel to hod ribbon, which I obviously never did, so I decided to use them to hang the curtain. I only had three and I needed four so back to Lowe’s we went (my kids were really good sports about all our trips to Lowe’s and Hobby Lobby). It’s been over a year since I bought the red hooks and I wasn’t able to find anymore red ones but I did find some white ones the same size. So I used two red ones for the curtain under the sink, two white ones for the curtain over the window and one red one for the pot holder.
Fabric to match this project was a pretty easy decision. Earlier this summer I made the kids all a summer tote and I wanted a color that had red, blue, green and yellow in it and wasn’t too girlie. In this case I wanted the same thing so we went to Hobby Lobby and got some more puzzle piece fabric. I measured my width of each opening and doubled it for the width of my fabric. For the length I measured my length then added a few inches to it for my length. When I was done making my curtains I had a good bit of fabric left so I decided to make a quilted pot holder. I did this with the same idea of putting a quilt together. When I bought the fabric I also bought some rainbow ribbon to match so I used the ribbon for piping. Have I mentioned that I did this at 2 am? Yes, I couldn’t sleep thinking about my project so instead of staying in the bed and risking waking Adam up I went in the sunroom to work on it and it was after 2 am that night before I got in the bed.
Then I needed something to store all the food in so we loaded up and went to Dollar Tree and looked for some baskets. I knew they usually carry a variety of baskets in multiple colors. I lucked up and they had one in each of my four colors in one style basket. I really wanted some that looked like the baskets at the grocery store but they only had those in three of my four colors but I went and head and grabbed them. Hopefully I’ll find a yellow one in there later. The kids helped me divide and organize the food in the baskets. They had already been organizing it based on food groups so we basically followed that same idea.
Now we have a really cute play kitchen. The big kids all love it and Bradley is getting more and more interested in it. I have some left over fabric so I am debating on making some place mats for the table. I know I want to buy some more kitchen toys but since I don’t have anywhere good to store them I am thinking about getting the bookcase at Hobby Lobby that matches the table and chairs. I want to buy some small appliances for the play kitchen. Also I saw some stuff that I like for when Bradley gets a big boy room (thinking way down the road) that uses the same colors so I could even move it in his room later.
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