Cannon's Kitchen

I'm sure you've all seen the "entertainment centers turned play kitchens" floating around the internet. They are everywhere and I'm pretty sure every other child got one this Christmas. Cannon could not be left out. 

Cannon first played with a little kitchen a few months ago at a meetup group. He stirred, cooked and imagined for 30 minutes straight all by himself and I knew we had to get him a culinary workspace all his own. 

I won't recap every step we went through, but I'll leave you with a few links. I first saw my friends, the Apels, make an AWESOME play kitchen, then I decided I liked this gray color scheme. We also used a few other to give us ideas, like this kitchen, this one, and this one. You could always Google or search Pinterest for more ideas.

We started with a FREE entertainment center from Freecycle. WHOOP on the price!

Danny then bumped out the walls, knocked out the shelves, and built a countertop.

And yes, we really ended up just using the frame of the entertainment center, but I guess it was less overwhelming/intimidating to start with a frame than to start building something from scratch. :-)

Here's the kitchen completely built, but unfinished. I purchased the faucet and oven knobs at the Habitat ReStore. The sink is a bowl from Walmart, as were the oven racks and dishwasher strainer. 

Add paint and it's coming together! Picking out these paint colors was a fun way to live vicariously through my child because I think this is how I would paint a kitchen if I ever had the chance. Hopefully Cannon likes gray!

And finished product. We still need to add plexiglass to the oven door, although Cannon finds it mighty convenient to just reach in and pull out his baked goods, and I'd like to add a picture above the sink for a little decor. We have yet to hang anything on the hooks on the right because Cannon can't reach them, but one day . . .

We were originally just going to do two cupboards under the sink and on the left, but Cannon LOVES helping me load/unload the dishwasher, so we decided he needed his own little dishwasher. 

Props to Danny for all of his hard work and evenings spent in the garage working on this. Thanks for listening to all of my hair-brained ideas and making them come to life!

Pictures of the great unveiling coming soon.