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

Things are finally moving along a bit faster. And it’s almost time to hand over the reigns to the beautiful and talented Ziva, my wonderful wife with fantastic design skills. She’ll be handling the decorating and accessorizing of the kitchen once I complete the construction. We last left off putting together the faucet and taps and attaching them to the kitchen. We are really trying to keep to our objective of using recycled materials as much as possible. For not only environmental reasons, but financial as well. Good non-plastic play kitchens are very expensive and by using materials that we have had sitting around the house or found on the street, we are easily able to keep the price low. Whenever I see a bunch of junk on the curb I scour without shame which has helped us managed to keep this project within a very low budget. Really low.

Onwards!

Step 11: You might recall that I found a think piece of wood on the street, cut it, and used it to stabilize and attach the two old Ikea night table’s together. I still had the second piece and decided it would make a great back splash for the kitchen. Using some sort of bracket I had in my trusty toolbox I attached it to the back of one of the night tables and the back of the sink.

And here is what the back splash looks like from the front.

We recently had proper closets installed in our bedroom and removed the piece of crap that was there for years. Despite my efforts, the only way the old closet was coming apart was through the wanton destruction of the thing. So I went all HULK on it. I believe I might have said “HARRY SMASH!” at one point. Good times. It was mostly MDF boards and I thought I might be able to use some of them, but they were far too damaged. Luckily the molding of the top of the closet and shelving was in decent enough shape that I saved it. I hadn’t thought about what I would use it for exactly but I figured it would come into good use at some point. And come into good use it did. Here’s what the molding looks like:

Step 12: I measured the molding and using my trusty saw cut three pieces to sit on the inseam where the back splash meets the counter and to fill in the space between the faucet and and the counter tops (formerly night tables).

While the two pieces between the faucet and the countertops were snug, I had to use a little wood filler to fill in the tiny space between the two.

So here is where we are at now. I’m not quite happy with how the molding on the countertop just ends abruptly. I didn’t permanently attach it yet because I need to figure out a solution to make it a bit more visually appealing. Perhaps with some fancy jigsaw action I’ll make a nice curve on it. Open to any and all ideas.

Total costs:

8 plastic wheels: $6:00
MDF Board: $15.00
Metal Bowl for sink: $5.00
Shelving brackets: $5.00
Faucet and taps: $10.00

Total: $41.00

Recycled materials used:
Night tables: Purchased nine years ago
Wood planks found on the street
Molding from an old closet

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

Building a DIY children’s play kitchen in 30 easy steps. Part 2

Building a DIY children’s play kitchen in 30 easy steps. Part 3

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Tags: DIY, play kitchen