News Taffy

I thought that I'd share with you all about how we made London's kitchen set, since I mentioned it in the first blog post. She's been playing with it so much lately with the rain and loves it just as much as when she first got it! There are ideas online all over using an entertainment center, so we looked at several and tweaked our own until it was just right. We bought the entertainment center on Craigslist.com for $35 and already had a lot of the paint.

Our first job was to go and find the pieces we needed, such as the sink and oven/stove knobs. We got the faucet for $10 at the Surplus Warehouse store over on Caraway, and next went to Home Depot. They were so awesome and when we explained our project, they went all over the store looking for things to help us. We eventually ended up in the very back with the appliances that are being trashed, and the manager spent a crazy amount of time prying off an oven handle for our fridge door and gave us some knobs off an oven. Free!

Next, Lance built up the sink area and cut a hole. He painted the entire kitchen white, except for inside one cabinet (the oven) which he painted black. We slipped a metal mixing bowl that we already had down into it for the sink and glued the rim down all the way around. He put on the doors he had painted, and flipped the oven so it'd open down. (Side note, if you make this and make the oven so that it does open in the direction a normal oven opens, add a small chain from the door to the inside of the oven so that it catches. Otherwise, it drops and hits little feet)

The stove is simply a piece of wood painted white with black circles and glued on. The only other thing to do after all that was fill it up! I did spray paint a small square piece of wood with chalkboard paint and stapled ribbon on for a handle to hang at the end of the kitchen with her apron. We also added a few screw in hooks to hang up dishes and her oven mit.

It was sitting there all ready to go Christmas morning, and as soon as she saw it, she ran to it and immediately started doing dishes! Doing dishes? Where'd she get that? I would totally understand if she ran straight to it to put on a pot of coffee. ;)

All in all, Lance worked on this kitchen 10ish hours (most of that was trying to figure out how to do the next part without a guide) and we spent around $60. Less money than the neat plastic ones we liked so much and this one turned out SO much better! We plan on adding a back later on and painting on a window and adding curtains, but it's just perfect without any of that too!

Until next time,
Heather