Ikea Play Kitchen Hack

If you have a toddler or preschooler, chances are you will be getting a play kitchen at some point or you already have one. There are so many options for kitchens to buy. But what if you could customize your kitchen or even make it to match your home kitchen? Well, you may have heard of one of my favorite stores, Ikea. Ikea is full of customizable additions to your home that are inexpensive and fun. You can find lots of guides to “Ikea Hacks” with easy to follow instructions and testimonials online.

My Ikea Play Kitchen Hack

Recently, we decided to make one of these custom kitchens for Ethan and it came out great. We used the Ikea “DUKTIG” play kitchen. Here is the cool thing about this kitchen: it is height adjustable! The legs have a few different options for height based on whether or not you use the plastic bases that are included as well as which side you use. So this kitchen can go from baby to preschooler easily.

We, of course, also loved how easy it was to make our own.

Here’s what we bought to do this Ikea play kitchen hack:

• Ikea “DUKTIG” Play Kitchen
• Contact Paper for the counter – we chose a marble print
• Spray Paint
• Drawer Pulls, if you want to swap those out
• Push Lights, I got mine from the Dollar Store
• Painters Tape

How much spray paint you buy depends on your design.

We did aqua with rose gold accents. We needed 3-4 cans of aqua, 2 cans of rose gold, and 1 can of chalkboard paint. The kitchen comes with all you need but we chose to swap out the handles with real drawer pulls for effect. You’ll use the push lights for under cabinet lighting and as an oven light so you’ll need 1-3.

Here’s the instructions for this Ikea play kitchen hack:

1. First, you’ll want to lay out all your pieces and tape up the “glass” on the doors.
2. Spray paint your pieces accordingly. Take care to which side you are spraying in case you are using two different colors. For my design, we painted the other side of the remaining back panels with chalkboard paint so our kitchen could also be used as a little food stand.

3. Cover the kitchen counter with your contact paper. It already has a wood design but maybe you want to do marble or even a tile look. I recommend doing a full wrap. We only went over the edge and our son was able to peel it off.

4. Assemble your kitchen!

Add your finishing touches…

…and your accessories!

Other Ikea play kitchen hack tips:

• Don’t do this project during a rainy or even misty season. The spray paint needs a good amount of time to dry.
• You may want to add a backsplash.
• My favorite accessories to compliment this kitchen are the Ikea play utensils and fabric or soft play food.
• I put together a little menu on Canva, and had them printed and laminated. This is a fun way to add personalization.
• Don’t go overboard on the fake food. They’ll tell you what imaginary food is in the dish.
• If you choose to do the Chalkboard paint on the back panels it opens you up to many other uses: Food Stand, Lemonade Stand, Ice Cream Shop, Store, and anything else you can imagine.

Have you tried this Ikea play kitchen hack? Let us know how it turned out in the comments below!