DIY play oven

My Mother has an adorable playhouse in her backyard. The kids love to play there, in particular my daughter Goose. We had bought a play-kitchen to put in there. And it was great, however during a rainy may, we brought it from the playhouse for the kids to play on inside. It's stayed there forever since. I still loved the playhouse and wanted it to be perfect! Which is to say, I'm reliving my childhood through my kids. :)

I had found a really cool pin on Pinterest and thought, "Hey, I can do that!"

Which I always do, and I'm always wrong.

Here's the blog that posted an easy DIY play-kitchen.

Pineapples and pinecones.

I have some plastic drawers that were barely used. And thought, "I bet I can do that for cheap too!"   Spoiler alert, I was wrong.

I was going to buy the cricut vinyl she had used, even with no cricut but thought  maybe I could find something around the house. See, the thing is, paint wont work well on this plastic. And it was going in the playhouse, which in Texas, is almost always very hot. So, It needed to be sturdy, and not fall off, or flake in the heat.

I found some old plastic folders in my office. I started to cut out shapes and I thought superglue would work to stick them on.

My original idea for the drawers.

In process. I had some leftover wood knobs from a piece of furniture. Some leftover pieces of wood. And an old springform pan I never used. 

Cutting out some pieces.

Layout of idea.

Gluing.

Well, after waiting for both craft glue, super glue and others to see if they would work. I noticed that none of them did. I needed a glue specifically for plastic. The very slick kind of PVC plastic. Which no matter where I went; Home depot, walmart, Joann, was never there. I found some epoxy for plastic, that had a horrible beige color. And said, Nope. So I thought, hell, I guess I do have to spend some cash. I went to Joann's to get some of the cricut vinyl. It was only $6.99 a roll. So $14.00 ain't bad. But then I saw duck tape. They had 8"x11" sheets of it. And a slew of rolls of colors. The sheets were $1.99-$2.99 a piece, I bought six. A roll of duck tape was $5.97. A small thing of acrylic silver paint for the knobs and the wood faucet for $2.99. I bought a plastic bowl with was about$5. Which because I'm horrible at math, came out to $27.92.  I had the drawers and the knobs and the wood. But the drawers if you bought them new would be $17.99. 

So, if you bought these things new, this set would cost $45.94 to make. Ugh. So, later, I remembered that the kitchen set  I had gotten for Goose was less than $50. So much for a cheap DIY.  For me, I made the kitchen for $27. But I found a few online pre-made for about $30. They were on sale, but still. Well, I had already sunk some cash into this project I was determined to finish it!!

With duck tape sheets and a roll of duck tape. Faucet unpainted, and bowl not glued in.

Faucet painted, more duck tape added, and changed out the bowl for one I already had. I had to screw in the faucet, because the glue wouldn't work. Neither would command strips. And the bowl even after gluing a thousand times, wouldn't stick either. I just left it. I mean, whatever. (sigh)

I had bought a kids play set of dishes for $10.99. So, the kids loved it. Absolutely. And in the end, well, that's the point.

In the playhouse. 

The absolutely adorable playhouse in the yard. Those cute plastic kids size adirondack chairs were $12.00 a piece at Lowes. 

The frozen table and chairs I had gotten a year ago for about $25.

So that's part of my plan to make-over the playhouse. The other part is re-painting the walls, since they got filthy and covered in mildew over the hot and occasionally wet summer. We left the windows open since It was so hot and forgot to close them. (yeesh) My hubbie power-washed the inside and out but still couldn't get off all the grime and mildew.

Oh yeah, I also have to fix that broken window. Plans plans plans. I sure do have a bunch.

Till next time, Rudy