Our Play Kitchen Project

Sometime during the second week of December, I started pondering what to get each of the kids for Christmas this year.  Having Annie in the hospital had set back my gift planning, so when I came up with the idea of buying a play kitchen for the girls, I thought it sounded great.  I started searching online for the perfect play kitchen for less than $100, but everything I found was too small, too expensive, or cheap looking.

I explained my dilemma to Justin who quickly volunteered to build one.  I wasn't sure he could pull it off, but I entertained him by drawing my plans of how I would want a play kitchen to look. He created a blueprint of my sketches in PhotoShop on on his computer to put everything in scale.  Next thing we knew, a week before Christmas we found ourselves buying wood.  And of course this project was a great excuse for Justin to finally buy some more wood-working tools he's been wanting including a router and jigsaw. 

Unfortunately, we didn't quite have it finished for Christmas morning.  We spent all day Christmas Eve working on it, put the kids to bed, and continued working on it.  By 10:00pm Christmas Eve night, we thought we really could finish it by about 2:00am or 3:00am.  We worked quickly--I did all the painting, using my hair dryer between coats, while Justin cut plexiglas for the window and microwave and oven doors.  By 5:00am all we had left was to apply some coats of polyurethane.  The paint coats dried in about 5-10 minutes with my hair dryer, so we thought we could get a few coats of polyurethane down that quickly too and be to bed by 6:00am.  Unfortunately, polyurethane doesn't dry as quickly as paint.  So we applied one coat, got a snack and headed for bed, crawling under the covers around 5:40am Christmas morning.  Molly woke us up at 7:00am, then again at 7:30am, and then yet again at 8:00am, so we didn't actually start opening presents until 8:30am.  We were exhausted, but the girls were so excited to discover what we've been working on for so long.

The last few days we've been working on applying 3 more coats of polyurethane, and now today we put the cabinet doors back on, screwed on the handles, and hung the drapes.  So now, after many, many hours, our play kitchen is finished.  I have to say, Justin continues to amaze me with his talent!  We had a lot of fun working on this project together, and I'm thrilled with how it turned out--almost exactly how I had sketched it. Plus, we saved a ton of money doing it ourselves.  We even got the cabinet knobs, handles, and stove knobs for free from Habitat Restore.  The sink is simply a stainless steel bowl that we got for a buck at Goodwill.  I love it! And more importantly, the girls love it!

My sketch to show Justin what I wanted it to look like.

The finished kitchen!

Here's how we did it:

All the wood.

Cutting the wood with a circular saw and square.  (Justin wished he'd had a table saw.)

Sanding the wood with the electric sander.

Routing the edges and grooves for the cabinet hinges.

Base of the kitchen

Base of the kitchen with holes drilled for sink and faucet.

Assembling the base, and fitting the doors.

 

What a man!

 

Shelves installed and hinges placed

 

Top hutch added.  Getting ready to measure and cut back board.

Oops!  Forgot to cut the window out before attaching the back board!

Jodi's paint job.  Window framed glued on.

The curtain strung across our storage room to hide the project.

The finished kitchen:

Stove knobs and oven handle we got for free from Habitat Restore.

Countertop

Plexiglas window and curtain--I wish I could say I actually took the landscape photograph myself.

Plexiglas window in microwave

Notice Justin's nice routing job to sink in the hinges.

Oven with plexiglas window and cabinet shelves

They LOVE it!  Well, Annie isn't too thrilled--she's had a cold.

All moved in and stocked with dishes, pots, pans, and food.