Building a DIY children’s play kitchen in 30 easy steps. Maybe. Part II

Several weeks have gone by and we’ve been itching to make some progress on the play kitchen. Our social life has taken precedence and the past few weekends have been filled with copious amounts of visits, trips to the zoo and lunch guests. This hasn’t left a lot of time to move forward with the play kitchen. We finally had a respite from the more social aspects of ours lives (I’m generally an introvert) and took huge advantage of a quiet Saturday and we made an incredible amount of progress. It’s starting to take shape and another couple of weeks it will be ready to be handed over to my collaborator, the lovely Ziva for further design and decoration.

Step 4: We found some nice thick treated wood planks that once belonged to a closet or something lying on the curb outside our apartment. The first piece I cut to size (using a lot of patience and my trusty jigsaw) and attached it with four brackets to the two night tables for both support and to work as a bottom shelf.

Step 5: It was now time to get the sink on. So that is exactly what I did. I got the sink on. Aw yeah. I thought this was going to be the most challenging action to get right but it proved to be much easier than I anticipated. I purchased a piece of MDF from a local store (this was one of my only purchases for the unit up until now), cut it to the proper length so it would fit nice and snug between the two night tables and had my trusty collaborator Ziva guesstimate the circumference of the sink and then drilled a hole smack in the middle of the circle. Several holes actually. I then meticulously cut out a circle in the mdf board. I purposefully cut less than I needed to for several reasons. First, I’m very inexperienced with the jigsaw and second – I only had one shot to get this right. Luckily, Ziva’s measuring skills were spot on (at least in this case) and I am apparently naturally talented when it comes to the jigsaw. After some trial and error and a lot of tweaking, I managed to get the bowl to fit in the hole nicely. The lips rest perfectly on the counter – which is now a sink.

Step 6: I firmly attached the sink (!) to the unit with brackets which brought even more stability.

I then stood back, smiled and called it a day.

Costs so far:

8 plastic wheels: $6:00
MDF Board: $15.00
Metal Bowl for sink: $5.00
Shelving brackets: $5.00

Total: $31.00

Recycled materials used:
Night tables: Purchased nine years ago
Wood planks found on the street

Next step: Figuring out how to properly attach the sink to the wood so Tzofi can’t just lift it out.

Building a DIY children’s play kitchen in 30 easy steps. Part I

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Building a children’s play kitchen in 30 easy steps. Maybe. Part I

What is my parenting philosophy? Making life as awesome as possible for my daughter. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Cooking has long been a passion of mine and whenever I can I try to involve Tzofi. She showed an interest early on, so about a year ago Ziva (my wife for those new to this blog) built an awesome kitchen for Tzofi made from almost all recycled materials (cardboard boxes, old desk files, bottle caps and more).

We decided the time was ripe for an upgrade and purchasing a new bedroom set and getting rid of our old Ikea night stands afforded us an opportunity to get the brain wheels churning and to design Tzofi a kick ass solid kitchen she can play with for the next few years. And one that won’t put us in debt. We also recently renovated our walk in closet space and have a few old bookshelves which are in pretty bad condition so we have even more raw materials to work with.

This is a pretty big project with many steps involved and we still aren’t 100 percent sure how it’s going to turn out. I plan on documenting this DIY project here as we move forward. Today we made major progress and I got to use my new jigsaw for the first time. I like tools. Power.

These are the night tables we are dealing with:

Step 1

The first step was to measure the legs and decide just how much we wanted to cut off. Ziva meticulously measured the height, marked it off and I sawed off the legs with much pleasure. I even wore safety goggles which was also enjoyable.

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Leonard Cohen delivers in Tel Aviv

My first introduction to the music of Leonard Cohen was in 1991. I was a DJ at my high school radio station which sat comfortably at the left of the dial. Big props to WPOB 88.5! I came across I’m Your Fan in 1991, a compilation of Cohen covers by the likes of R.E.M., The Pixies, James, Nick Cave and The House of Love. I was taken by both The Pixies cover of “I Can’t Forget” and James cover of “So Long, Marianne” and immediately sought out Leonard Cohen’s music. To be honest, it wasn’t for me. Simply not loud enough. I loved the melody, but I don’t think I was mature enough for the lyrics. It was only years later during my dark years of college while listening in the lonely, cold hours of the night did I truly learn to appreciate the poetry of Leonard Cohen.

Hallelujah. Now that’s a song I’ve heard hundreds and hundreds of times. Whether it be the original Cohen version or one of the numerous covers by Jeff Buckley, John Cale, Rufus Wainwright and even American Idol participant Jason Castro (horrid IMHO). Let’s just say that the emotional resonance of the song has long warn off. While it is arguably once of the greatest song of the past 30 years, for a long time now, it’s just been another song to me. However last night during Cohen’s performance as 50,000 Israelis sang along with him and he took his hat to chest and closed his eyes to take in the moment I couldn’t help but get enveloped by the strong emotions that clearly everyone in the stadium was feeling. I’ve seen hundreds of concerts in my day and it’s hard to say that I have experienced such a powerful moment during a musical performance. Cohen’s performance of Hallelujah completely transcended what I anticipated to be the pinnacle of cheese. He managed to achieve an intimacy in his performance that I didn’t think was possible in a stadium of 50,000 people.

I’m not sure what Mr. Cohen is like when he is not performing, but on stage he was full of class. During his 3 hour plus performance, Cohen often removed his signature fedora during solos by his band and granted them his full attention as a signature of both respect and awe. Clearly enamored by the incredible backing band he introduced them more than once and even brought his crew on the stage at the end to thank them and all involved with the tour.

As he was just about to step off the stage after his third encore Cohen recited Birkat Cohanim (the priestly blessing) which clearly moved the audience.

“They shall place My name upon the children of Israel, and I Myself shall bless them.”

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No way! Harry posts again!

I miss blogging. A lot. I’ve been tweeting for a couple of years now and have all but abandoned this here blog. The blogosphere has certainly changed since I first started blogging and I think I lost my blogging voice. I also haven’t had too much time. My little munchkin is 2.7 these days and parenting leaves very little time for blogging. I’ve also been incredibly busy with my business and have been working more hours than I prefer to admit. That said, blogging for me has always been a fun outlet and I hope to get things hopping around here once again. As usual I have an awful lot to say and I think there is at least one person out there (Ziva, you do not count) that might be interested in what I have to say.

Is anyone even still subscribing to my RSS feed? Anyone?

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Shana Tova (Happy New Year)

Tzofia, her baby, legwarmers, hat and fur vest wishes you a happy and healthy new year.

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Google maps for Israel have arrived

Ouriel reports that after months of anticipation Google are finally offering maps for Israel. For now though they are just in Hebrew, the English maps show the streets, but the names remain blank. I guess we are in the really early stages of development since their doesn’t seem to be any official announcement from the [...]

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Hagigit turns you into art

Hagigit, a group dedicated to creating and encouraging public art in Jerusalem has brought much joy to many Jerusalem residents with their outdoor photo studios on Ben Yehuda Street and Gan Sacher. Last week they once again set up an outdoor photography studio – this time at the end of the summer party at the Jerusalem theater. I really enjoy looking at their public photo studio shots. I feel that they really exude pure unadulterated joy. The subjects get to enjoy it in two stages – once when they are initially shot and secondly when they see themselves in the work online.

Like all good art collectives these days they have a nice presence on flickr, YouTube and the Facebook.

We interviewed Guy Yitzhaki, a member of hagigit a few months ago for Jerusalemite.

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Back from the USA

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Things only I care about…

HBO kills Preacher. Irish vampires everywhere mourn.
I saw Dinosaur Jr. a few months back in Tel Aviv. Loudest show I have EVER attended – and I have been to hundreds of shows. The Onion has a good interview with Lou Barlow. He listens to a lot of Turkish 60 psychedelia. Who knew that even [...]

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Well hello there…

Yes, I am actually posting here. I’ve been real busy lately with my business, Jerusalemite, blogging daily at Israelity, family etc.
I miss blogging here and am going to make a real effort to get things moving here again.

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