I’ve been so excited to post about this play kitchen that my girls got for Christmas from Santa. In fact, there is too much to write about in just one post, so I am going to do it in two postings. One about the kitchen itself and the other about the redo of the faux granite counter tops.

To refresh your memory, this is what this play kitchen looked like when I pulled it out of the shed.

Actually, this is the clean version. It was covered in a layer of dust, cobwebs and other unmentionable nastiness!

So, here’s the story. This kitchen is probably 50+ years old. I inherited it when my Dad’s church sold their large building and downsized. Sometimes being a PK (pastor’s kid) has its benefits. When I was a little girl, my sister and I would play with this kitchen for hours. Over the years, it took a beating from generation after generation of kids imaginative play. When I brought this home, my oldest daughter wasn’t even a year old, but I knew in a short time, she would enjoy playing with it as much as I did. Well, four years and two kids later, it was time to tackle this project. Not only was painting it in order, but I needed streamline the hardware so that all the drawers had knobs and all the cabinets had pulls. I also needed to fill the holes where a fourth oven knob should have been. Plus, the entire oven door was missing, which meant cutting and painting a new one.

The first step was addressing the ugly counter tops! Thanks to a perfectly timed correspondence from Giani Granite, I was offered a kit of their granite paint and I chose to use it to redo these counter tops. Probably not quite what they had in mind. I’m going to be writing an entire blog post just about the painted counter tops!

Next came the painting. This would have been so cute in a great shade of teal, or sage green, even black! But, since this was going home with me, I needed to think about versatility. It needed to match the decor in any number of rooms of the house so I opted for plain old white. I lathered up the entire set in two coats of homemade chalk paint. 

I used my palm sander with fine sand paper to add a heavy distressing. It made the white paint much less boring and the finish is super smooth. Two coats of finishing wax make it completely cleanable!

The new oven door with my limited artistic skills at work and the new hardware!

All set up on Christmas Eve!

I even repainted the girls chairs and set the table for lunch. Cheeseburgers, hot dogs and chicken nuggets.

Painting around those burners…not fun!

The real question is, did they like it?

Yes! They did. I made them pose for a picture and then my oldest disappeared while we were all having “tea.” I went to go find her and she was in the living room by the Christmas tree playing with a 25 cent Princess Paddle ball toy that I found at a yard sale. So, it goes to show that no matter how big, how grand the toy, when it comes right down to it, when you are just four years old, a basket of dollar store treasures is pure joy!

Although, she did tell me, “Mom, you can’t sell my kitchen because it was a Christmas present.”

Fair enough. The kitchen stays!