Roadside Play Kitchen Makeover

Oh dear friends, you really are ever so patient with me!!!! 

I won't pretend that life isn't getting the best of me lately, because it definitely is. 
But there are so many things to share with you!!!

Let's talk about roadside finds because it's been a minute since I last shared an awesome furniture redo with you guys!!

Look at what I scooped up a couple months ago when a friend texted me that she had seen this little guy sitting curbside: 
(and, yes, we all NEED friends like this in our lives!) 

It was nasty (I mean....SO nasty), a bit water damaged and obviously missing doors or...something... on the front. 

But it was solid and had been well made at one point. A little rough around the edges but it's the kind of piece that made me giddy as soon as I saw it. 

First things first was to get it cleaned up. It took a good bit of cleaner, vacuuming and scrubbing to get the films of dirt and grime off. And a super thorough sanding job to even out patchy areas. 

After cleaning and sanding, I decided it needed a few things added to it. I wanted to create a fridge and oven space and those areas needed doors. Luckily, the compartments were already created, I just needed doors to fit those areas. 

Of course, I wasn't lucky enough to find an exact match among all my scrap doors and pieces so we used an existing cabinet door we had and cut the top off of it to create the fridge door. I reused hinges for everything from my scrap pile of hinges I've collected over the years. 

It pays to hoard, ya'll. 

The oven door was a bit trickier to create. We were using scrap wood here and needed the doors to be able to open freely. I added a 2x4 along the inside edge of the open area to allow the oven door to rest against it when closed and so there wasn't a gap between it and the fridge door. 

I created the oven door out of 1x4s and small trim pieces I had on hand. It was made to fit the piece of plexiglass I had gotten from Lowes earlier which is what I based the size off of. 

With the door built and installed with reused hinges, we were ready for some paint. Be sure to not add your plexiglass in until AFTER painting. Unless you want to tape it all off. 

Oh, and I also added a little shelf into the fridge area. Not the prettiest or most perfect, but we had the extra door lying around so I installed it onto a couple pieces of scrap wood. Going with what we have here, ya'll. 

With doors created and installed, I decided to just go ahead and spraypaint all the pieces I wanted white first rather than try to paint around the main color later. 

So stovetops, oven dials and the little sink & knobs were all spraypainted a glossy white prior to any other painting. 

I also went ahead and painted the insides of the doors, the bottom shelf & the backsplash areas all white too. I planned to cover up the backsplash but didn't want stain showing through any gaps, so I gave it a couple quick coats just in case. 

Then after letting those dry overnight, I taped all the knobs and burners off for the main painting. 

Funny story, I originally planned on painting this my tried & true Mint Whisper (you can see that color more in action in my toddler room revamp here) but accidentally grabbed the wrong paint. 

When I realized it was wrong, I realized I liked it anyways and kept it. I knew it was going in our kitchen so it ended up matching a little better anyways! This blue is called "Watery" and is super pretty too! 

I painted all the rest of the main parts of the kitchen with 4 coats to make sure it was thoroughly covered. And... I used a sample quart from Sherwin Williams. Gasp. 

I won't tell you to use it on everything but I use it a LOT and it holds up fabulously. 

So my PLAN was to use real tile on this cutie but that plan crashed and burned when I started calculating cost of the tile I wanted for a PLAY kitchen. So after much brainstorming and calculating, we had a sudden genius idea to simply create faux subway tile with super thin boards from Lowes. We measured and cut for each backsplash area. 

I won't say that we were the most amazing at this part. 

But it was 1000 degrees out and we were getting cranky. True story. 

I spaced them out the best I could with the penny method and then just hot glued those suckers in there. Easy change out later if I ever hate it. Oh, but I painted them before gluing them in :) 

Wanna see the whole pretty little thing all together?!?! 

How fun did it turn out though?!? 

It brightens up our kitchen so much!!! 

The cute little oven just does me in every. single. time.

The added plexiglass is so cute and I found the perfect handles for the fridge & oven in my stash too. A couple coats of glossy white spraypaint gave them new life. 

Those little knobs were still in great condition and turn perfectly. 

I also added a little touch pop light into the top of the oven area so she can reach in and click it on to watch her cookies bake :) 

Just add a little bit of velcro to one of those cheap touch lights!!! 

The sink was the craziest find in my party closet- I had this random silver bowl that pretty much fit perfectly into the sink area. The kitchen originally already had a piece of wood that supported the bowl from underneath in it so all I had to do was set it in. There was a bit of a gap around the rim of the bowl to where you could see down into the fridge. 

And should I be ashamed to say that I found a random piece of rubbery material in the garage, cut it to fit and then hot glued that sucker in along the edge of the hole to fill in the gap? After a couple coats of paint, you can't even tell. 

The cute little burners got a little vinyl action to become a bit more realistic. 

And the subway tile completely has my heart. 

The wonkiness of it just adds to the charm :) 

Oh and those tiny little vinyl stickers for the knobs were just too much! Eek! 

One of my favorite things ever is that we took Maggie Grace to the thrift store and let her pick out a bunch of random dishes- she thought this was the BEST thing ever. You should have seen her light up!!!

I took them all home, cleaned them up and gave them coats of either pink or white spraypaint. 

She loved helping pick out which colors to make them!!! 

Will the chip? Sure! They are toys. 

I sprayed them with a top clear coat to help a little but the chips just mean they are well loved and well played with. And nothing a touch-up later on can't fix. 

We added white cup hooks to one side to hang her 'new utensils from. 

This is seriously one of my most favorite transformations EVER. 

Check out these side by sides if you need a little reminder as to how amazing she looks now vs. the day I picked her up....

We did a ton of the work with materials/items we already had on hand so it cost us right around $20 to get the plexiglass, thrifted dishes and materials for the subway tile!!! 

What do you think of this little roadside rescue??? 

I'll be back SOOON with an update on our Master Bedroom since I've FINALLY gotten around to getting photos of it :) 

Talk soon! 

Like me on Facebook. Follow me on Pinterest. Subscribe to my feed.