Make A Play Refrigerator From An Old Cabinet, step by step

Remember how we DIYed Clara a play kitchen last Christmas? Well, it was such a hit then (and still is – in fact it is likely one of the only toys that she plays with every day) we immediately knew that we should add to it. More kitchen = more lively, right?

What can you add to a play kitchen like ours? Well, it was clearly lacking a frigid kitchen staple. You know, a refrigerator. So we swiftly homed in on that as an straightforward way to upgrade Clara’s setup. And the decision was made even easier by the fact that we had another cabinet leftover from the kitchen remodel that we had been hoarding saving for nearly a year in the basement with this play-kitchen “expansion” in mind.

It was from the Habitat for Humanity Restore (perhaps for $15? I cannot remember and the receipt is loooong gone) and we had considered using it for above our fridge, but then found one that was a better size. So this puppy has been sitting in our basement for over a year now, simply waiting to be fridge-ified. But it had some obvious shortcomings before it was ready for its kitchen close-up. Observe:

But if it is got a problem, yo I will solve it. Check out the look while my drill bit revolves it. (whisper this part: Ice, Ice, baby. Ice, ice, baby). Yup, $herdog is not the only one who can spit mad rhymes.

Fixing those aforementioned problems was not too bad. First I took out both of the doors and brought in three shelves inside using one 10″ wide piece of pine board that I grabbed at Home Depot for $6 (which was the width of the cabinet). I attached each shelf with some plain screws straight through each side as you can see from the photo above.

Here it is with the shelves brought in. If I were doing a real “to scale” refrigerator I would’ve brought in more shelves closer together. But from Clara’s experience with her current play kitchen, the wide shelves are easiest for her to maneuver in (and some of her items are around 6″ tall, so spacing these shelves 7″ apart seemed to be the most functional. Neither of us had any strong expectations that our creation would ever hit a especially high level of fridge realism anyways… we simply want the kid to have lively.

Next up, I hoped to cover the recessed portion of each side so that it would be a flat box (plus it would cover up my screw holes from the shelf-adding step). So I used my table saw to cut some panels of plywood to size and then used wood glue to secure them in place. These were the first items I purchased since I did not have them in my scrap wood pile, and they ran me $8 for all of the wood that I used on both sides.

Here is my fancy step of letting my glue dry, with the assist of clamps and some heavy objects to keep the plywood pressed flush to the cabinet.

Here is how it was coming along after both sides and a top panel were done. It was certainly starting to look less like the bedraggled old cabinet that we began with.

Before painting, we lightly sanded the finish off of the doors and the face of the cabinet – simply like we do when we are painting kitchen cabinets for real.

We also thought a lively feature of her fridge would be to make the front magnetic – simply like the real deal. So I busted out the can of magnetic primer that we still have plenty of (even after this project and this project). We did three coats, since we have found that to be stronger than one (pointer: shake the heck out of it before applying it so all the magnetized particles do not settle to the bottom of the can).

Here are the doors all primed with the magnetic stuff and the rest of it primed with simply normal primer (Zinsser Smart Prime, which is low-VOC – it is in fact the same stuff we used for our real kitchen cabinets and we still had it leftover).

Once that was all dry, it was time to get our paint on. While some sort of silver or grey on the outside might have looked stainless-ish, we thought it would be pleasant if this guy fit in with Clara’s existing white play kitchen. But because we cannot resist a little bit o’ “fancy” we painted the inside a light blue with a small quart of paint that was leftover from a few book projects (Sylvan Mist by Benjamin Moore). You know, to lend an air of “cool” to the thing.

Once the inside was “chilled” with blue paint, we painted the outside surfaces semi-gloss white (Decorators White by Benjamin Moore – which we simply consistently seem to have around for painting trim, the office cabinets, etc). It only took us one coat on the outside framing thanks to the white primer that we brought in first, but the doors took three coats to cover all of that black magnetic primer. But once it was all said and done, I reattached the doors with some new hinges and brought in some pulls that matched the rest of her kitchen. Those were the only other items that we purchased for the fridge-building project (also from Home Depot like the plywood) and they came to $5.25 for all the hinges and $6 each for the long fridge-ish hardware pulls – which were 7″ long for anyone wondering.

Then we thought it would be lively to give the fridge a logo of sorts, to assist it look less like a cabinet and more like a fridge (we thought crazy-gluing them in place would assist them stick for the long haul). So Sherry found these scrap-booking stickers at Michael’s that were as close to stainless steel as we could find. We thought one of the snowflakes could be a cool logo-ish-looking icon next to the name of our fictitious appliance brand.

We had a pleasant spirited debate as to whether it should be called “Cool” or “Chilly.” This is what happens when two former advertisers get into a branding discussion.

Ultimately we chose on cool… but we were not 100% sure so we simply softly stuck them up there without any crazy glue on them quite yet. Simply to get a feel for our little logo idea. Then we both stood there staring at it for a while and realized that it was a lot cooler in our minds. Hah. And in real life it simply seemed kind of cheesy on the otherwise clean front (there is not any lettering on Clara’s original kitchen, so perhaps we were going overboard with this addition on the fridge). Plus, Sherry was convinced that Clara would peel them off in 2.2 seconds – even with crazy glue (perhaps ripping corners of them off, digging at them with blocks, etc). But here is a pic of how it might’ve looked had we stuck with it…

But now you get to see the whole shebang all wrapped up and ready for Christmas morning. I hope you are all gently shaking jingle bells and/or playing various holiday-songs, because here is what Clara’s gonna wake up to Christmas morning:

Yup, there is Clara’s new fridge (okay, it sort of could double as a pantry too) next to her kitchen from last year, plus a little food cart that we will get to in a minute. And of course, you cannot give someone a fridge without stocking it full of food, right?

For the most part this is in fact play food that we already owned. We’d purchased a bunch to give her last year, but after seeing how well the few sets of play food that she opened last Christmas had entertained her, we opted not to shove two more boxes down her present-riddled throat and instead planned to wait a while and introduce them later in the year when she was getting bored of a few other toys that we could phase out. Little did we know that those two boxes would sit unused in the spare room for an whole year. How did a whole year pass? Does not it feel like we were simply sharing Clara’s play kitchen a week ago?

Most of it is Melissa and Doug stuff that we scored on Joss & Main at a pleasant deep discount. I personally enjoy the bologna.

We also supplemented with a few “DIYed” items of our own. For example, we picked up (and emptied) a couple of these teeny compact Ben & Jerry’s cartons. I took one for the team and downed both of them in about four scoops.

Sherry also found these wooden eggs and egg crates at Michael’s to fill out what apparently is the dairy shelf in her fridge. One day – perhaps around Easter? – we might even decorate them with Clara as a lively holiday activity. The funny thing is that Clara met Santa a little while ago (yes, the real one who hangs out at community events) and asked him for “eggs for her kitchen” so we thought that was sweet sufficient to warrant an actual crate of eggs. Make that two.

Also at Michael’s Sherry found these little Chinese takeout containers. You know, so Clara can pretend she has some leftover General Tso’s or something.

 

Oh yeah, and about that cart…

It was a thrift store find at one of our go-to local places. It was $5 and it was already this color, which was a fairly lucky break considering how many other strange colors it could have been. Clara in fact helped us bring it home, so hopefully we did not simply damage the illusion of Santa there.

We thought it’d be a strong addition to the kitchen set because Clara has gotten a lot of lively out of a little wire fruit/veggie basket that she already has. And since this one is large sufficient to hold all of her produce along with some pantry-ish items on the bottom and it wheels around, hopefully it’ll add up to hours of enjoyment.

As for a budget breakdown, here is how this little fridge & rolling cart full of food stacked up:

• Cabinet – already owned (perhaps $15 originally?)
• Wood for shelves & sides – $14
• Primer & paint – already owned
• New hinges from Home Depot- $5.25
• 7″ hardware handles from Home Depot- $12
• Stickers that we never used – $5 (with 50% coupon from Michael’s)
• Thrift store cart – $5
• Wooden eggs, crates, & takeout containers – $6 (with 50% coupon from Michael’s)
• Compact Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cartons – $2.50
• Other play food – already owned (about $30 originally)
• TOTAL: $50.75 (it would likely cost around $95 if you did not already have the cabinet and the play-food on hand)

Under $51 for both the fridge and the cart is not too bad, right? The play kitchen from last year rung in at 74 beans, so it is pleasant to add two other kitchen items for less. The only thing that is missing are some grocery store gift cards so Clara can take care of some of the items on her shopping list…

Oh and the magnetized doors are worth the effort, so we highly recommend those if you are in the mood to add some “extra sauce” to your fridge. We can both picture Clara hanging little drawings that she does on Post-Its and someday writing her own lists in sloppy kid-handwriting.

We will be sure to share video or photos of Clara in fact receiving her gift, simply like we did last year, so stayed tuned for that. And oh yeah, if you were wondering what mystery room we shot these photos in… it is the playroom, which still has walls painted in a bunch of random colors from shooting our book back in February. This particular wall is Sylvan Mist by Benjamin Moore (the same color that we used on the inside of the fridge, so we cracked up when we realized that).

So, are any of you other “Santas” out there whipping up something in your workshop for next week? Are your kids as obsessed with play food (specifically play eggs) as our daughter? Do you find it funny that play fruits and veggies are typically life sized but most of the “pantry items” are at least half of their normal size (even when they are made by the same company)? I will pause while you ponder that.

Psst- I grabbed a swift video of Clara playing with her kitchen the other morning, so that is over on the house Life for ya.