A Cute Play Kitchen Alongside Light-Up Burners

Clara has had her play kitchen for over a year and a half and she still plays with it nearly everyday, which is practically a toy miracle considering how swiftly other items are dismissed. So play kitchens have a special place in our hearts. And this one is extra special because, well, Casey and Phil had a ton of lively making their own – and brought plenty of new ideas to the table. They do not have a journal, but they outlined their process here for you folks:

Much like you folks, my husband Phil and I chose to build our daughter Zoey a play kitchen for Christmas. I sketched it out to mimic our kitchen cabinets, and I knew she’d enjoy a fairly realistic looking stove in a lively color. Luckily my husband is a fantastic carpenter, so we built the whole thing from scratch using scrap lumber from from our whole-house renovation and butcher block left over from our previous house’s kitchen renovation.

All said and done we spent an embarrassing amount of time on this, but I think the end result was worth all the work!

The cabinet building was fairly straightforward- we built basic cabinet boxes, brought in the face frames, then brought in the extra paneled detail on the sides. Phil build the doors separately and we attached them after everything was painted. The stove was a little (okay, a lot) trickier. We build it in 2 major parts- the lower half (the painted part) is all one unit, and the upper half (the stainless part) is the other half.

Phil enjoyed the idea of dimmable “burners” so that was certainly our biggest expense in the whole project – but he was right that it takes the whole thing to the next level. Zoey loves them! For the top half we sandwiched the LED lighting in between 2 layers of wood to hold it in place. We used a 6″ hole saw to create the 2 openings where the coiled LED lighting shines through. We wrapped the top part in stainless contact paper, covered the lighting with a piece of tinted plexiglass, then we put the whole thing on top of the lower half.

And I know people enjoy a good resource list, so here is where we got things:

• Cabinets- made from scrap wood from other projects
• Countertops- leftover from previous kitchen (lumber liquidators)
• Sink – Amazon
• Faucet – Amazon
• Cabinet knobs – Target
• Paint color on cabinets – Benjamin Moore’s Especially White
• Paint color on stove – Benjamin Moore’s Meadowlands Green
• Handle on stove – Ikea
• Knobs on stove – Amazon
• Timer – Anthropologie
• “Stainless steel” contact paper – Home Depot
• Oven rack – Dollar Store
• Flexible LED neon – Del Lighting
• Dimmers – Amazon
• Plexiglass for stovetop – eBay
• Wallpaper on interior cabinet – leftover from Zoey’s nursery, Wallpaper Direct

Hope you enjoy! -Casey

Is not it excellent? Zoey is one lucky kid to have such resourceful and creative parents who have so much lively building things for her. Thanks for sharing your creation with us, Casey and Phil!