The Kitchen

Ok... So I promised a post about the kitchen my mom and I made... so here it is. Unfortunately, my mom has the before pictures, but I'll try to give you a visual picture.
It all started with a pink, white and purple kitchen and microwave that I bought off of craigslist. And we added a horrible yellow kitchen cabinet that I bought at St. Vinnies. With a little bit of shopping at Menards, some power tools, a little creativity and ALOT of hard labor... This is the finished product:

 

 How did we do it? Let's find out .... First we took all the hardware off. There was not burners (they were painted on).... but we did take the sink and faucet and knobs off along with the back splash. We bough silver spray paint and sprayed the top of the counter. Once it was dry... we sprayed it with this "stone" spray paint to the counter looks like granite. We sprayed the sink (it was purple) and the faucet (also purple), repainted the knobs (pink) and added burners... these are wooden coasters turned upside down, painted. Then we took a thin towel dowel, painted it black and sawed it into small pieces which we glued on. The kitchen was missing one burner knob and it didn't have a knob to the oven... in additon, the knobs were under the sink! So... we filled in the knob holes, put one knob (which we repainted black since it was purple) under the sink. We then made knobs from flat wood discs I found at hobby lobby and a wooden stake (also from hobby lobby) that we cut up to make a handle and glued onto the knobs. Drilled holes for the burner knobs.. and there you go. The cabinet under the burners has one shelf.. but no door. So I found a curtain valance at st. vinnies, cut it smaller, seamed it, and we put a towel dowel inside the cabinet so it has a nice curtain.

The oven proved to be a bit of a challenge. For some reason, the door opened sideways (the handle was on the left side with the hinges on the right). So we had to move the hinges to the bottom, which involved cutting small rectangles (my mom's all about the power tools). We added a new handle (again, the old one was pink)... spray painted the door (which was purple) and the inside of the oven. OH, and it was missing a piece of glass.. so my mom cut a piece of plexiglass and glued it right in.

 

The microwave was.. you guessed it.. pink and purple. We painted it, put a piece of plexiglass in it... new handle on it... and I had to make new pictures for the buttons on the microwave.

 Lastly... the Fridge. This was really a creative project as it started off as a yellow kitchen cabinet. We sprayed it silver, and my mom added some height to it with some scrap wood. We added a handle... and my mom came up with the idea of putting sticky magnet sheets on it so he could stick magnets to the fridge like a real fridge.

 The inside was even more work. My mom made a cute "egg" holder for the inside of the door from a shelf I found at goodwill and a drill. She moved the shelf up to the top so it's a freezer and cut plexiglass shelves for the fridge part. More paint on the inside and it was finished.

The cost overall was about 130$.... but that included half the food in the fridge (all wooden.. normally very expensive but it came with the kitchen/microwave set) and a wooden mixer and bowl (see under the microwave). Killian loves it, and it was made with love (and a little frustration) from his mama and his gammie. And it gave my mom and I some wonderful memories together :)

So there it is... his kitchen. :)

And one final update... our other big furniture piece from xmas... his toy shelf. This my dad made with love all by himself:

3.5 feet tall.... 4 feet wide... 12 rectangles for all his toys. We love it! I put some hooks on each side for Killian's dress up clothes and my dad got him some cute bins (see the lion and elephant?) It's made reorganizing his room so much nicer. :)