Our play kitchen makeover

I have wanted to do this FOR AGES. Literally, ages. Lily got her first play kitchen for Christmas when she was just one. It was cheap and it didn't last long, but she loved it. We bought her the lower half of the IKEA Duktig play kitchen for a bargain price on Gumtree just after her second birthday and I always wanted to customise it like the amazing creations you find on Pinterest.

But over a year went by. And the kitchen stayed the same. Lily loved it anyway, it is a great design and the adjustable height feature meant that she could easily reach everything. Because it was low we found that it didn't intrude too much into the limited space of our living room and yet still had tons of room for all the kitchen accessories.



We moved house. And then we went to IKEA. Finally, we bought the top half to the kitchen and I could wait no longer. Despite the fact that I haven't unpacked most of the stuff in my bedroom, I HAD to start on making Lily's kitchen unique.

And so, I bought some supplies and got started.

It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. I used two types of sticky-back plastic (or contact paper as it's often referred to as on Pinterest). For the 'wallpaper' effect on the sides I used a blue ditsy flower design by Fablon and the glossy blue fridge effect I picked up in Wilkos. I then removed all the handles, the tap and the sink and spray painted them with a high shine metallic silver.

It took a few coats of paint which didn't take long at all. I sprayed some adhesive hooks for good measure then I also picked up some chalkboard paint and used it to turn a plain wooden heart from The Works into a slate-effect 'to do' board.

It didn't take too long, and once done I popped it back in it's new home under the stairs. This has now become Lily's 'home corner' as it seems like a pretty good way of using up an awkward space and also moving some large toys out of our way in the living room.

Now I've started it's actually pretty hard to stop! I'm still on the lookout for some little lights to go on the underside of the top unit and some knobs to add to the oven. I also have my eye on some little baskets to go underneath and hold some of the various paraphernalia that goes with a toy kitchen.

Let's just hope it doesn't take me another two and a half years to complete!