Pretend Play: Freecycle Score! A Kitchen!

So, a few weeks ago I was casually scanning through our local Freecycle Digest email.  And I saw a post for a Wooden Play Kitchen.

Wait ... What?  Let me re-read that.
I can't deal with the volume of emails Freecycle generates so I get the digest, which sometimes means you miss out on stuff because of the delay. (in fact, it might have been a day later even when I read it.)  So I fired off an email to the poster.

Well, of course the response was that someone else had already emailed about it, but had failed to show once already.  One more no show and it was mine!

The next morning, bright and early was an email telling me that the kitchen was all for me!  I jumped into the car and off I went.

I wanted to get a kitchen for Dew1 last Christmas - his speech therapist suggested it as a language and pretend play developer - and we actually got a Little Tikes one in November from Toys R Us on one of their weekend doorbuster sales.  But three days before Christmas when I went to put it together, I discovered that there was no way it was going to assemble.  I was really annoyed with both it and myself for not believing the mixed reviews.  So it was boxed back up and returned to TRU.  And we never did find another one.  I think that we wanted to get something Super Cool like the 50's Diner from Step2, but knew in our hearts that it wasn't in the budget nor do we realistically have the space.

So this Freecycle Kitchen was perfect!  In our budget as well as nice and compact in size (and not Pink!).  She had mentioned that it was originally from Target, and that door fell off regularly, so that wasn't a surprise.  The post had said wooden, but in reality it's a laminate.  I had visions of refinishing it, but that's not going to happen.

So my plan is to clean it up (it was sitting on her front porch for 4 days waiting for a pick up), touch up the red wood parts that need a bit of paint, and possibly replace both front doors with a curtain - probably in black broadcloth as I have an armload of it in my fabric stash.  My Dad (PapaDew) is going to make us a faucet for the sink - I didn't really realize it was missing until I noticed the hole in the counter.  I'm going to get some baskets from the Dollar Store to store the play food we have.  The clock hands are broken, so I have to decide how to fix that - new hands?  a whole new clock mounted on top of the old one?  And I'm going to make a bunch more felt food for them so they can do a little more pretend play than what they can do now.

And once it's dressed up, it will be their Christmas Present!  Yeah, maybe sounds like I'm being cheap, but it's new to them, and in a way will be handmade by PapaDew and I.  And there is something fun about the story behind this.  One of my fondest Christmas memories is the year I got my new purple bike.  My parents will deny it to this day, but I knew it was my sister's blue bike spray painted purple for me.  But I loved it just the same - and what kid doesn't want to find a bike under the tree!  It took up the whole living room!

So this is my Freecycle find!  I'm so very excited.

(And if you haven't checked out Freecycle before, check it out now!  there are some very generous people out there sharing neat stuff - all in the name of keeping it out of the garbage.  And when I get around to cleaning out my clutter, I plan to Freecycle some stuff too, to pay forward the generosity others have paid to me.)

Ooh!  As I'm writing this, I look over and the Dews are playing with their play food right now!  Dew2 seems to be making a stew and Dew1 is making ice cream sundaes.  They are going to Love their kitchen!

I'll be sure to write about my progress, as well as 'after' pictures when it's done.  I'm so excited!