Play Stove – The Full Tutorial

Snow Day! We got several inches of snow here in Atlanta yesterday, which meant the Boy had the day off from school today, and we had a fun day together playing in the snow, hitting the science museum, and having mexican food. So here is a tutorial I did a while back for Whipup.net. I’ve posted the end product here before, but not the actual tutorial, so I figured it was about time. Hope you enjoy!

How to make a funky kids playstove out of an old side table

Obviously, the final size and design of your stove will depend on what old table you reuse to make this. But this tutorial should give you some good ideas on how to take a project like this and personalize it for yourself.

original-tableStep 1: Find a good table.
Check the size and make sure it has a few drawers or doors.
In this case, we used a small table with long legs, and multiple drawers.
We don’t have a ton of space, so we wanted to go small.
The key to this project is working with the piece you have. Figure out how
to use the lines and details of the piece to your advantage.

Step 2: Modify as necessary.
In our case, the table had long legs, which weren’t what we were looking for
in a kids stove.
So we measured 1 ½ to 2 inches, and cut the legs off, using a circular saw.

Step 3: Sand/prime.
We took the drawers out, and sanded everything down enough that it had a
‘tooth’ to take paint.
Then primed the whole thing with white primer. If you’re lucky enough to
have a piece in a light color, then less primer will be required, but for
us, several coats were necessary.
Lesson learned, for this one, we should have done more coats of primer to
cover the dark green. If there is anything you want to leave the original
color, tape off before priming.

Step 4:
We had taped off anything we wanted to stay green, in our case the panels on
the drawer fronts. The rest was painted yellow. Allow to dry thoroughly,
multiple coats if necessary.

Step 5:
Make the knobs.
What we did: cut 3 circles out of ½ in thick MDF (we had three knobs in the
current top drawer, modify per the number of knobs you have/want).
Paint the circles yellow.
(While this dries you can put more coats on the base piece if necessary.)
For the black centers of the knobs, cut scrap wood into triangle or
trapezoid shapes, and paint black.
{ For the less carpentry inclined, you have multiple options with the knobs
. Ours were circles cut out of MDF, but if you want, you can buy disks from
the craft store, or even easier, find some flat round drawer knobs
(something like like this knob) and paint on the details. If you
use store bought knobs, your step 7 will actually be easier. }

Step 6:
The top.
Tape off the bottom (yellow) and spray the top with a metallic paint (we
used a hammered aluminum).
Let it dry.
After it’s dry, tape off the top with painters tape.
Use a circle cutter (or a saucer or something else round) to cut out circles
that will become the burners.
Peel out the circles, leaving the remainder masked.
Paint the interior of the circles Red. Let dry.

Step 7:
Attaching the knobs.
Remove the original knobs. In our case, there were three drawer pulls which
we were replacing with burner knobs.
For Homemade knobs:
You’ll need for each knob, a washer, your disk, a screw, and the
triangle/trapezoid shape. Additionally, you’ll need some scrap MDF to screw
into, inside the drawer.
Place a washer, then the disk, then slip the screw through. Screw into the
scrap MDF, leaving it loose enough to turn. Then glue the black triangle to
the top, covering the screw.
{For Store Bought Knobs: Simply attach the knob as you would to any drawer,
but leave loose enough to turn easily. No extra MDF backing is required. }

Step 8:
Now to finish off the top of the stove.
Peel off the paper you were masking with, to reveal the red circles. The
size of your burners will depend on the size of your circles, so estimate
accordingly.

To make the burners:
Take about a 1 in wide piece of MDF, about 7 in long in our case, and cut at
a 10 degree angle on each side.
Do this 3 times.

Sand edges, paint tops and sides black.
Glue to top of stove, as shown, using wood glue. Put something heavy on top
until it dries.

Step 9:
Send the Chef in!

Oh, and The 6 o’clock stitch asked me to include this in their tutorials round up… check out other cool ones here.