Clara's kitchen

We've been a little busy lately, but it was well worth it...

Clara got her early birthday present - a play kitchen! She's actually known about it for months. She was calling it her "kitchen" since it was an old wood entertainment center. 

And here's what it looked like as that old entertainment center, when we got it for free - FREE! - off of Craigslist. And, of course, here's the "after" too...

A lot of work was put into it and I have my wonderful, patient, amazing, kind, generous husband to thank for that.

Oh, that picture brings back memories of when we were young and naive and didn't realize what we were in for.

Just kidding, but it was a ton of work. Did I already mention that??

None of that mattered, though, when we showed her the finished project. There was lots of woooooow's and oooooooh's.

And she plays with it constantly, just like I hoped.

She loves cooking with the food and pots and pans that her Nana and Boppy got her for her birthday...

And she'll get even more play food tomorrow on her birthday. So fun!

So here are some of the details...

I got the idea from other play kitchens I saw online, and set out to do one myself. You really can't follow any sort of pattern, though, because every entertainment center (or end table, cabinet, or whatever old piece of furniture you use) is different. So we winged it. And, I should add, neither of us are particularly skilled in this department. The painting I can handle, but the construction? Not so much. But we plowed through.

First we sanded down the veneer, and primed. Then we did about a million other steps.

I debated getting a real faucet (you can get small ones made for campers or bars), but in the end we decided to go a little more whimsical. I found a $0.30 letter "U" on clearance and we cut it to be the perfect faucet. The base is a $0.50 piece of craft wood and we painted both that and the faucet with silver paint. The handles are drawer pulls, which cost about $4 each...

The sink is a mixing bowl we already had. We just cut a hole for it to sit in.

The burners are just craft wood, which I painted. And the knobs are more drawer pulls...

The oven opens out and there's an LED light inside. The oven rack is actually one of those things you put in your sink, held on with hooks. I tried cooling racks but couldn't find the right size.

I painted a window on a $0.50 piece of wood and made little curtains. The hooks are a key rack (and the adorable pig whisk and spatula are actually real utensils, although I'm not sure who needs ones that small!).

We had to make a door for the fridge (and the oven), which was one of the most complicated parts of the project...

You never know what you'll find in the fridge...

We really don't have any idea what the total cost was, but suffice it to say it was way cheaper than if we had bought one. And if we had bought it, we wouldn't have been able to take advantage of all that problem-solving we had to work through as a couple... and our kids wouldn't have had to fend for themselves all those weekend days... and our deck wouldn't be covered in paint. Haha.. no, really. There is no price we could put on watching Clara and Luke play with this kitchen. Worth every second.

Happy early second birthday, sweet Clara. And don't expect a big homemade tool bench or anything next year, Lukie. Mommy and Daddy are tapped out.