How to Make a DIY Play Kitchen Part 3: How to Make the Sink, Countertop and Stove

I know you all missed our DIY Play Kitchen goodness over Valentines Day. But we are almost done! Today we are going to learn how to install the countertop / stove area. that includes the sink, faucet, stove and countertop material.

(joining us late? That's ok. Get started with the first post here)

Things You'll Need:

• Countertop material (laminate, faux granite contact paper or paint)
• Stainless steel bowl
• Sink faucet
• Hole Saw
• Jig Saw
• Liquid Nails 
• Caulk
• Clamps or heavy objects
• 1 (6 count) package of 1.5 inch wood circles
• 3 large wood circles
• Wood discs
• 2 thin birch dowels
• Grey paint
• Glack paint
• Clear craft glue
• Multi-hook rack (I got mine at Dollar Tree)

Let's Get Started!


Countertop
If using laminate or contact paper, measure your work surface and cut your material to size.

Cut a hole for the sink (whether you do this before or after gluing down the material will be best decided by the kind of material you use. I cut mine out before.) and glue down your counter using liquid nails following the instructions on the package. Add backsplash edging if desired.

The cans are weighing it down while the glue sets. Liquid nails takes about 24 hours to set, so jump ahead and work on making your stove burners and knobs.

Stove Knobs
Bust out your bag of 6 small wood disks:

Cut two of the six discs in half:

Use wood glue to glue a half circle on top of one of the full circles. Repeat until you have four knobs.

Once the wood glue is set, paint the knobs black

Burners
Paint the large wood circles grey. I used these wood soccer ball plaques that I got on clearance and just flipped them over:

Cut your dowels into approximately 2 inch pieces and paint them black along with the knobs you just made above.

Once the paint is dry, glue the grey circles down to the stove area and then glue the dowels down on top with the craft glue.

You can glue down the knobs, or if you want them to turn, you can attach them with screws.

Let all that dry and then wait until tomorrow (gotta let the liquid nails set for 24 hours remember?)

Caulk
Caulk around the edges of the countertop material if you used laminate like I did. If you used contact paper or paint, skip this step.

(sorry...no pictures of this part.)

Faucet
Now that your liquid nails is cured, we can move on to drilling our holes for the faucet.

I used a real kitchen faucet that I got from free cycle so it had the hard ware sticking out from the bottom of it. I used a 1.25 inch hole saw to cut 3 holes. Then I dropped it in like a regular faucet and at attached it with the screws from underneath.

Sink and Hooks
Drop in the the bowl for the sink. I didn't glue mine down in case we decide to play with real water and then we can pick it up and dump it out. You can glue your down with liquid nails if you'd like.

Attach the bar with hooks above the sink and hang your utensils on it.


Sit back and enjoy your handiwork because you're almost done!

This post is part of a mini-series on how to make your own play kitchen from a re-purposed piece of furniture. The beginning of the series with photos of the finished play kitchen and links to all subsequent posts lives here.