Play Kitchen: An Ikea Hack

***Let me start with a disclaimer.  It is January and I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun.  It is grey and cold and rainy every single day.  As a result, any and all pictures I take are blurry and oddly colored.  Such is life.

We made a play kitchen for our baby’s first birthday.  I’m going to use the term “we” very loosely.  I have a power-tool aversion and relied heavily on the Mr. for all the major construction.  I was in charge of gluing and painting and anything fun.

We started with an Ikea Rast nightstand.  I wanted a smaller play kitchen and the $14.99 price tag could not be beat.  The bits and pieces of additional lumber came from the kitchen cabinets we ripped out when starting our kitchen remodel.

 

The burners are made from wood coasters that I’ve had in my possession since the dawn of time and never liked.  The coasters had concentric circles carved into them which when painted, made the most perfect burners.  My paint job however, was not so perfect but I think it just adds to the whimsy factor.  I painted two of the knobs from our old kitchen cabinets to look like oven/stove dials.  They are screwed in with some slack so that the dials can be turned.

 

I totally lucked out with the oven.  Not only did my father-in-law have the Plexiglas for the door, but he had a mini cooling rack that makes an excellent oven rack.

We used an old bowl that has been kicking around our house forever to make the sink.  The faucet was a bit tricky.  The cheapest one I could find was $20 and it was UGLY so I wandered around the home improvement store until I found something that would work.  What I ended up with as a J-Trap, a 6″ extension piece and some sort of cover thing (at the base) out of the plumbing aisle.  The whole thing cost less than $10 so I’m happy.  If I had left myself more time (I had a birthday deadline remember) then I may have been able to find something at the thrift store.  The hot (pink) and cold (blue) knobs were $0.99 each at the home improvement store and can be turned just like the oven dials.

 

We finished the whole thing off with some creamy yellow paint (spray paint) which isn’t showing up right in the photos (no sun remember?) and now we’ve got a darling play kitchen that will get much use in our home of four kiddos.