Monet's Kitchen - The Play Version: Part 2 Hautbois and Trumpet Fanfare

Ta-Da.... The Monet Play Kitchen. The refrigerator and hutch will come later in the fall, but this is the main part.



Building this was the most fun ever. Miss T. would have been quite happy with something more modest, but her mom and I laughed constantly while making it. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.










The second shot shows it in situ, for scale.



The backsplash of Delft tiles is paper. We created the whole thing in Photoshop, using a disk of tile patterns from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and printed it out on 8 1/2 by 11 sheets. We painted the plywood underneath a grey grout color, so mistakes wouldn't be glaring. We used Mod Podge to stick them on and provide a protective surface. It turned out so well that I'm trying to figure out how to do the same thing at home.







The dish drainer is simply cut down from a full-sized Ikea one and painted white. The country sink is a salad bowl from Target (before the boycott) and the counter is faux marbre done by me. The gold supports are from a broken antique table Daughter of COG had lying around.





I love the way the country stove turned out. The brass escutcheons add the final touch to the doors, but we put the brass hinges on the 'wrong' way so they'd show. And the brass trim around the doors is wood strips, sprayed antique brass, with brass screws for additional 'brassiness.' The brass knobs at the back of the top are also from the reuse center.





This is a better shot of the faux marbre counter. Those are black coasters from Ikea forming the rings on the stove, glued and screwed with brass screws.