Noa's Play Kitchen

Noa definitely needs some more "big girl" toys. She's totally getting tired of all the little baby toys that she has and we haven't bought anything special for her in a while. I had this great idea to refurbish a play kitchen for her since I kept seeing it all over the place online.

I looked on Craigslist and found this ugly one for $30. I probably could've talked her down, but I'm not much of a negotiator, so I kind of forgot. Anyway... $30 is better than $150 - $200 for a little wooden kitchen.

So, while the girls were at Mother's Morning Out, I had a 3 hour window to start my project. After I stared at it for about 15 minutes, I decided I had to take everything apart in order to sand the very thick paint off of it.

I put all the little hinges and screws in sandwich bags and labeled them so I would know what was going on when I put it back together.

I sanded and sanded... and sanded... piece by piece and after being covered in blue and red dust, was finally able to prime them. I wasn't going to at first, but decided they needed to be primed just because the paint was so smooth and was still very present even after a lot of sanding. I found Rustoleum on a shelf in the garage, which is a spray paint primer for metal things. Even though this was wood, the can said: for smooth surfaces, so I thought I would give it a go. So far, so good.

Next I started painting each individual piece. This is when I realized that this project is not for the faint of heart. It took about 5 - 6 coats to get rid of that nasty blue paint. I don't mind painting though, it just took a while. I just painted and prayed for about a week's worth of the girls' nap times. Half way through painting, I put the bottom back together and painted more coats while it was one piece.

After trying a stone spray paint (to try to make it look like granite), I decided I liked just plain paint better, so I tried some green paint that we had left over from Noa's roon. I liked it! Green it is!

I then sanded the top and covered all the silver parts with paper so I wouldn't paint them. I primed it and painted it white. I added green later but white was my base.

After painting everything (a majority of the work), I decided to put little hooks on the side to hold 2 baskets for more storage (small "cup holder screws" that wouldn't go all the way through the wood).

I made 2 basket liners for the inside.

And voila!

Noa has something to do, and I have something cute to look at. :)
Before

After

So, here's the run-down:

- Play kitchen - $30

- White paint - 1 quart -$9 (I used almost the whole thing)

- Green paint - Free - leftover from Noa's room

- Spray Clear Top Coat - $3

- 2 white baskets - $1.25

- Pink towel - $2

- Fabric for baskets - Free - leftover from another project

- Time spent: about 15 hours

Total: $45.25 - not too bad for a little wooden custom kitchen. :)