A Labor of Love: Play Kitchen Makeover

For the last several months I have been wanting to get Olivia her first play kitchen. Eric and I had a disagreement over whether or not she would actually play with it. He claims that he and his sisters never played with their play kitchen when they were little. Don’t worry, I gave him the full eye roll and I think you already know who “won” that disagreement. 😉

So I began my search for a cute play kitchen. I am not a fan of super duper, overly girly things so I nixed any pink kitchens right away. I finally found this white vintage Kidcraft kitchen and loved it, but it was kinda plain and needed some pizazz! So I took to the mommy mecca, aka Pinterest, and found this AMAZING kitchen makeover pin here. It was done by Mandy, a blogger at Mandy Odle, and I checked her blog for a tutorial on how she did it but I couldn’t find anything. So I had to wing it myself.

The Makeover

First, I spray painted the hardware gold. I liked how Mandy only did some of the hardware gold and left the rest silver. I gave each piece about 2-3 coats of paint. Then I lightly sanded the fridge doors and painted them using Behr’s Rio Sky paint in an eggshell finish (I gave the doors two coats of paint). And finally, I ordered this marble contact paper and covered the countertop with it and used a box cutter to trim any excess around the edges. I also stuck on these command hooks to hang the measuring cups and the dish towel on the side. It was all really easy…

…until it was time to put it together. I had this whole vision in my head that I wanted Eric to put together the kitchen on Friday night so that she would wake up on Saturday and come downstairs and it would be like Christmas morning. And I wanted to film her reaction. I know, I’m a psycho mom. So on a Friday night he starts putting the thing together around 9pm. By 11:30pm I’m like umm, maybe we should just finish the rest of it tomorrow. Eric, in typical male fashion, was all like ‘no, I think I’m almost done.’ Fast foward to 2am and we FINALLY finished putting it together.

I put this kitchen on my holiday gift guide for toddlers because it is so worth it. We’ve had it now for almost two months and she plays with it every single day! And no kitchen is complete without food and pots and pans and dishes! I also saw these adorable copper shot glasses the other day and thought they would be the perfect play kitchen addition.

I joked to my mom that I used to go to bed at 2am because I was out partying all night and now I go to bed at 2 because I’m putting together my daughter’s play kitchen. I’ll let you guess which one is more rewarding.

XO,
L