Play Kitchen Challenge – Planning & Supplies

Cameron and Asher are getting to the age were they are imitating us. Since Haley and I both enjoy cooking, we have been giving the boys lots of pretend food to play with. We decided to make play kitchens for them rather than purchasing. We wanted something unique and awesome. After a lot of internet searches we found one that we really liked.

I found this one on the Ikea Hacker blog. We both really liked it and figured with a manlier color pallete we could make it work. It uses the Vika Furusund. We have an Ikea 15 minutes away so we planned to go on a Saturday (with the husbands watching the boys) to pick it up as well as a couple of accessories. We wandered the isles for well over an hour picking out drawer pulls, magnetic knife racks and coasters for burners but we never found the shelves. We did a search on their computer to find it and came up with nothing. Then we search on a friend’s iPhone. It showed up on the Ikea website but wasn’t sold at our location and also wasn’t sold online.

Well, crap.

So we took a look at the dimension and decided it was a little small anyways. We looked at some other sets of shelves but weren’t really inspired. So we scrapped that idea and went home to draw up some plans. 

Out came the graph paper. As a lover of geometry I got really excited about making a plan from scratch.

We kept the basic unit but instead of having the fridge under the sink we made that a plain cabinet and added a taller fridge to the left of the oven with a microwave on top. Our last stop of the day was Lowes. We needed some wood and hinges to round out our supplies.

Here is what we each bought for the project:

• a 4’X8’X3/4’ particle board
• half a sheet of a 4’X8’X1/2’ particle board
• 8 hinges
• a poster board sized piece of plexiglass
• a small stainless steel bowl with an 8 inch diameter
• lazy susan base (for the microwave)
• Handles: 2 large, 2 small
• PANNÅcoasters
• ASKERmagnetic knife rack
• Plain wooden knobs for oven switches
• 2 small tap lights for the microwave and oven
• Hinges to hold the oven open

Next Saturday we start cutting and sanding.