DIY Play Kitchen

OK, so I know this isn't crochet related, but I couldn't resist writing a post about this! :) My 4YO daughter, Genevieve, is obsessed with baking and cooking. She LOVES to watch Betty Crocker videos on YouTube, and every night before bed she likes to relax on the couch and watch Chopped on the Food Network. Normal behavior for a little girl, right? ;) 

She has a plastic play kitchen that we got her for Christmas when she was a toddler, but we had it outside at our old apartment and it was full of rain water that we couldn't get out. I was afraid it would be moldy so we didn't want it in our new house. After looking at Pinterest one day, I found so many DIY play kitchens. I started drawing out ideas & asked my husband if we could make one.

Now, the funny story. I had been searching on Craigslist for a used old entertainment center that we could turn into a play kitchen. I looked for about 2 weeks but didn't find anything that was appropriate, not too much work, or too far in location. Finally we decided to go to Menards and buy all the wood to make our own. The wood and a few other items for the kitchen only cost about $35. Later as we were leaving the house, we pull out of the driveway and see that my NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR had an old entertainment center by the road that said, "FREE." I couldn't believe that after all that searching, our neighbor has one a few hours after we bought all the wood. My husband had already started building it, so we were stuck. Oh well. :)

Unfortunately, I don't have photos of the before pictures. (They are on my husband's cell phone.) But here is the play kitchen after we painted it and assembled it:

We still have to find some stove knobs, but after that it should be pretty much finished. We painted it with leftover paint from the walls of our new house. I made the curtains for about $6, and the picture is what we see when we look out our kitchen window. I just printed it off and stuck it in a frame. For the sink, we made a big hole and put a metal mixing bowl in there. The sink knobs are dresser knobs from Hobby Lobby, and the sink spout is a piece of plastic toilet plumbing thingy (I think it's called a P trap?) that I painted silver. For the stove burners, I found rubber coasters at the dollar store and hot glued them on. The oven opens and closes with a magnet system, and we used cooling racks from the dollar store for the oven rack. We still have to find a way to hold them down. This was actually really easy to make. It ended up being much larger than I pictured, but that's okay. More room to play! My daughter loves it!