Recently I've been working on getting my three-year-old's play room in order. Well, not ordered per se, as things never seem to stay picked up for long. One of our biggest needs in the play room was storage, especially to hold Clara's cook-its (cook-its are what I have always called play kitchen utensils and play food, don't ask me why!!). She has a little red and white kitchen from Target, but she had so many pots and pans and kitchen accessories that her sink was always filled up with assorted playthings. And you can't pretend-wash dishes in a full sink (we're starting her early on the chores, folks!).
So when my mom offered up an old cabinet that she had played with as a child, I was eager to give it a new life. My mom keeps everything, which is the subject of many family jokes. But I was so glad she held on to this cabinet. It brings back a lot of special memories as her dad made it for her when she was a little girl, and she repainted it for me, and I played with it when I was little. Now, Clara loves it, and we're keeping the family tradition alive.
When we brought the cabinet to our house, it was in pretty sad shape. There were numerous holes and dings in the paint, the hinges were rusty and the paint was peeling. It had lived at least 20 years in my mom's attic where it was exposed to who knows what (I won't go into the story of the raccoon living in there last summer). It had been painted several times over the years, first green and then bright yellow. After checking all the paint layers for with a lead paint test kit, Robert sanded the entire thing thoroughly, filled and sanded all the holes and marks, and gave it a good cleaning. We then painted the cabinet with three coats of Benjamin Moore Advance paint in off-the-shelf white. The cabinet doors got a coat of magnetic primer under the paint, though I'm sad to say that the doors are only weakly magnetic now, probably having to do with the fact that it took three coats of white paint to cover the dark gray primer. Maybe one of these days I'll sand them down and redo it, as I had visions of little magnetic letters on the cabinet door fronts. Finally, after some new drawer pulls and hinges, and letting the paint dry the recommended time, we anchored the top of the cabinet to the play room wall, and voila!
Now all that's left to do is add some red and white gingham check shelf liner to the inside of the cabinet to tie in the colors of her other play kitchen.
Plenty of storage, with room to grow!
