Wooden Toy Kitchen

This is a post of a toy kitchen I made for my daughter for Christmas and I've previously posted it on my other blog here. So sorry if you've already seen it!

 A simple design with minimal materials needed. Just a sheet of ply, a metal mixing bowl, some hinges and an off cut of perspex. I think the hardest bit was deciding what size to build it - I didn't want it too small, so she grew out of it too soon, but I wanted her to be able to use it straight away.

In the end I got the size just right, with enough storage to house all her toy kitchen bits and bobs.  

 

She loved it when she unwrapped it and started cooking on it straight away - I ate so much toy food and drank that many fake cups of tea I could barely move on Christmas day!

Hope you all had a good Christmas!

Funky Cupboard Doors

I fitted some cupboard doors that I made today. I was quite impressed with how they look.

 This is a simple set of three MDF doors, hung with kitchen hinges. The doors have lines scored across them that are 3mm deep, painted grey to contrast the white finish, each individual door has one line picked out in a different colour and some of the lines pass through two or three of the doors to tie them together.

What the doors are hiding

I think these look a little bit more like art than simple cupboard doors and I'm pleased with how they came out (I didn't do the painting).

This shows that a low cost material with a bit of time spent on it can give a great finish.

Pre Finished Oak Floor

Last week we laid a pre finished oak floor from Travis Perkins and to be honest I'm quite impressed with how it looks when it's down.

 This is the floating floor type, laid on a foam underlay with the tongue and groves all glued together. Lots of beams and doorways to go round and oak skirting and beads made out of the same stuff, at the customers request but unfortunately the longest length was only 4ft so lots of joints!

The customer seems really happy with it. My only concern would be how long this "high" finish will last compared to my usual oiled finish, but when you're having to pay for labour this pre finish makes it a lot cheaper rather than having to pay me for a couple of days to sand, stain and oil the floor. Also it means that the furniture didn't have to leave the room whilst we were laying it, we did one half then moved everything over and did the other.