Play Kitchen: Sanding

Sanding, and Sanding, and more sanding.  Whew!

I used paint stripper for one cabinet, but gave up on that and used elbow grease for the doors and the other cabinet.  I guess only time will tell which was the better choice.  I'll know if the paint chips off or scratches more easily which one to do next time. (Wait, next time??)

I sanded everything with our little power sander, mostly just enough to get the shiny varnish off.

One side of the shorter cabinet is going to be the oven, which means I need the door to hinge at the bottom on not on the side.  The hinges on these cabinets are really weird, so I had these big holes to fill on this side.  I used drywall mud we had leftover from our basement to fill them in.  When they were dry I sanded them flat.  It took a couple of coats, but I eventually got it. 

This also meant I needed to fill in the original handle holes on the door.  Easy!

Next up:  primer!

The Dollhouse

I was blessed to be able to keep this curio holder from my grandmother's house where we lived for almost a year.  I have a lot of memories of this little cabinet and the room where it was hung.  It will always be something special.

I struggled a bit with the idea of changing it at all, but I thought that it would be exactly my grandmother's style to make something new out of things you already had.  She was incredibly frugal and produced the most beautiful works of art in several mediums.  She was pretty cool--if only I could match up a little.  Anyway, I miss her.

So here's what it became:

I spent quite a while designing each room on Illustrator (with the help of some free clipart).  I learned A LOT!   I've still got the files if anybody wants a copy.  Then I printed them out and glued them in with my good friend Elmer.

Get ready for 100 Billion pictures.  Here they go:

My daughter's first home has hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances.  Nice. :)

It's not finished.  I need to touch up the paint, trim the edges, caulk the cracks between the floors and the walls, and the spray the whole thing with some sort of sealant.  It didn't seem like that much before I listed it all...

What do you think?  My daughter loves it.  She does not care one tiny bit that the furniture can't be rearranged or you can't open the fridge.  She did, however, giggle when I showed her the teddy bear in the girl's bedroom and when she noticed the winter coats in the mudroom.  She's got a great imagination and has a collection of random little figurines ranging from elephants to pirates who abide here.  I love her and hope she enjoys this for a long time.

DIY Play Kitchen Part 1

The beginnings of what will hopefully be an a-dorable play kitchen for my kidlette.  A neighbor was tearing them out of her kitchen.  I should clarify: neighbor suggests I actually knew the person.  Someone I live near was tearing her kitchen cabinets out.  I was heading out for a jog and saw the guys carrying them out of her house and loading them onto a truck.  Inspiration struck (and by inspiration I mean all the time I'd spent drooling over everybody else's DIY play kitchens kicked in) and I saw my golden opportunity.  Guess what? They let me have them for free-dizzle!

Here they are just as they came.  Beauties.  Tabula rasas.  Full of raw play kitchen potential.

Stay tuned!  They are almost finished, but I'm just now getting around to posting pics of what I did, so I'm going to do several posts on their transformation.  Hooray!