Ikea Kitchen Hack

It's been a while since I wanted to show you the DIY for Ikea Duktig play kitchen. Dylan loooooves it and it was certainly worth a bit of effort because the kitchen now works really well in his room.

This is the original:

With this post, I give a visual journey of the process, to make it easier for any mums who might have been wanting to do this! As you can see, I decided to paint only the bottom part of the kitchen. It was a way of saving time, and honestly, the natural timber colour is nice too, so I didn't feel it was necessary to paint the entire kitchen.

Once you have bought the Ikea Duktig play kitchen, open up all parts and divide them into groups:

- Parts to be spray painted: you will need a spray paint sealer and then a spray paint in the colour/finish that you choose. For these parts, I chose to go with a copper finish:

- Timber parts to be painted: basically the sides, the doors, the edge of the bottom panel, and the long piece of timber that sits on top of the doors. I sanded them lightly, used the spray paint sealer for these too, and then painted on them. If not sanding, the paint literally peels off them so make sure you don't skip this step.

Once painted and dried up, you can finally assemble the kitchen together. This is how the base looked when being put together:

I had to knock this off in one afternoon because my son could NOT wait to use the kitchen... so I was literally rushing to finish it off. I would recommend that you do it without them knowing about it! So it does not look perfect, but it does the job ;) 

Next, I would love to add a little splashback with sticker tiles. I love the White Damask shapes, that's what I would go for:

https://amzn.to/2DobRlu

 And another little upgrade would be cane webbing on those transparent doors in the oven and the microwave. I have shortlisted some from Amazon already:

https://amzn.to/34o4x5i

For the handles, I used some leather straps I had at home, cut them to size and nailed them on the timber. But I have seen beautiful hacks that use the original Ikea handles painted in a different colour, and that looks fantastic too! I might end up changing them later on.

As you can see, they are not my priority as I haven't done them yet, but hopefully will get there someday! I hope you enjoyed and this makes it easier for you to make decisions around how to paint the kitchen.