A transformation - craft project to make a wooden toy cooker.

For his third birthday C told me that he'd like a "little kitchen".  Bug had got a small plastic, battery operated, noisy kitchen for her birthday from a friend, and he loves it.  Sadly for him I prefer wood and recycled to plastic and noisy!  So I transformed an old broken down bedside table from our local furniture recycling project into a cooker...

1) Buy or find an old wooden bedside table.  (Mine cost £5).  Take the door off and the drawer out:

2) Use an electric sander to sand it down:

 3) Give it a coat of primer (a fresh tin found in the cellar):

4)  Then a couple of coats of gloss paint (the end of a tin found in the cellar - in hindsight this might not have been the best stuff as it remained quite tacky on the corners and edges, Mum suggests this might have been because of the age of the paint):

5) Re-attach hinges.  I had to buy some new ones as they were broken, and I messed the job up in many many ways.  Eventually I asked Hubby to sort them out while I went away on hols!

6) Fix on a door knob for the oven, and some more for the hob switches.  Mine had to go at the side and back because there was wood underneath in other areas so the screw wouldn't have got through.  You'll need to use a drill to make the holes.

7)  Attach some form of hob rings.  I cut out some circles from a cardboard box and painted them black before sticking them on.  Other options would be silver coloured circular cake boards.

And there you have it!  A finished cooker.  I'm proud that I actually finished a project that I had planned, and on time too.  And I'm kind of pleased with the results.  It's not perfect.  The hob rings are a bit ragged around the edges, the door hinges were disastrous and the paint remains a little tacky - but hey - I made a toy cooker!  With power tools!  Out of wood!  All by myself!