IKEA Play Kitchen Hack

I’ve been wanting to do an IKEA play kitchen hack since before my child was even born. They’ve dominated Pinterest for years and now I see why: turns out sometimes you just need a project where you can do something totally out of your comfort zone and with little to no pressure because it’s only a mini version of a kitchen for a toddler who doesn’t even know how to say her own name let alone “mum, this kitchen looks like absolute trash.”

The end result is colorful, cute and most importantly, our 18-month-old loves it. Here’s how we did this quick IKEA play kitchen hack:

Paint the base

Assembly is a given, so we won’t go into that, but I painted the bottom and top separately before connecting them with the countertop.

I started with a light sanding over the whole thing and a coat of Ultra Grip by Fusion Mineral Paint.

This is a really strong primer that’s actually made for surfaces like laminate that traditionally don’t take paint well, and you can definitely see some texture on there for the paint to stick to when it’s dried.

From there, I just did two coats of paint (Rice Crackers by Behr), and let it all dry.

Spray paint the hardware

I used a spray primer on the sink, faucet, and handles to prep them, and once that was dry I did the whole thing with a coat of a metallic gold spraypaint.

Quick tip: If you’re spraypainting something like handles, grab a piece of cardboard and poke some holes in so the handles can stand upright and it’s so much easier to get in all the nooks and crannies of the surface with the paint.

Sand and stain the countertop

These IKEA play kitchen countertops have a shiny, veneer-like coating but I was curious if it could be sanded down to stain and darken it up a little bit. I went over the whole thing with my orbital sander and after a little while that shininess dulled and I could tell the actual wood was coming out.

I wiped it all down to get rid of the dust then stained it with a coat of English Chestnut. To be honest, the stain took a little weird on the surface (not very evenly) but I put it down to me not sanding evenly enough, called it rustic and moved on. At this point I assembled the kitchen fully.

Paint the backsplash

So I saw a photo of a rainbow subway tile that I loved and considered ordering sample pieces of a few colors but they were backordered for like two months so I decided to just try painting some white subway tile leftover from our kitchen project and see how it went. Again, it’s just a play kitchen for a toddler!

I used the ultra grip primer again to give it some grit, and then used three sample paints and the Rice Crackers color I used on the whole play kitchen and sealed them with a few coats of polycrylic.

Assemble the backsplash

I cut a piece of scrap wood down to the size of the inner part of where the backsplash would go, then I used some leftover musselbound (read more about how we used it on our kitchen backsplash here) to stick the tiles down.

I used some grout caulk in the seams to make it look as though I’d caulked the tile and slid it into place on the kitchen then used my nail gun from the outside of the play kitchen’s sides to secure it in place.

Add all the cute accessories

Possibly the best part: Decorating. I loved finding cute accessories for this play kitchen and I’m sure I’ll keep adding to the collection as baby girl gets bigger and starts to get more interested in the actual pretend play element of it all. You can find a few of my favorite IKEA play kitchen accessories here.

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