DIY Kitchen Appliances
•Posted on November 27 2023
I'm excited to share how I made my kitchen appliances with you today! If you've been here a while, you've probably seen my fridge, but I finally worked up the courage to tackle the stove! I have had different ideas floating in my head, which of course led to procrastination, but I finally just went for it. I think this is an easy way to get some good looking appliances, and it can be totally customizable to fit your kitchen style!
Supplies:
- 1/8" Basswood Sheets
- 1/16" Basswood Sheet
- 3/32" Square Dowels
- 1/16" Round Dowel
- 3/32" Brass Tube
- 1/32" Brass Rod
- Jeweler Headpins
- Teardrop Beads (I bought mine on Etsy here, in brilliant gold)
- Spacer Beads (Also found on Etsy here, 6 mm in gold)
- Stove Burners
- Cricut True Brush Vinyl (I bought a multi-pack and used the black)
- Metal tube/rod cutter
- Wood Cutting tool of choice
- Exacto Knife
- Pointy Picker Tool
- Sandpaper (I prefer 400 grit for a very smooth finish on basswood)
- Glue, wood glue and a super glue that holds metal well
I started with my stovetop portion first. I have a small kitchen, so I made a pretty normal sized stove. I wanted my doors to come out past my cabinets, so I accounted for that in my measurements. My cabinets are 2 1/16" deep, so I added 1/8' to the depth. My stovetop measures 2.5" wide by 2 3/16" deep. I sanded all of the stovetop pieces with 400 grit sandpaper to give it a smoother finish since I will be painting it and I don't want it to necessarily look like wood.
The next step was add the trim around the top. I started with the front and back and added the side pieces. I will mention here that if you want to add the center grate like I did, make your measurements now before you glue the sides on. I marked 7/8" inches from each side, you'll see my marks in the next photo.
You can connect the marks to make lines if it's easier, it's only to guide where to put the grate trim pieces.
I lined the grate pieces up on the insides of my marks. You can see them just a bit in the photo.
Next up is adding the pieces that make it look like a grate. This is what I chose to do, but you could use square dowels or make it a griddle, that part's up to you! I cut them all to fit as I went, but they should be right about 1/2" long. I prefer cut to fit just because it gives you a little room for error if say your lines weren't 100% straight. I plopped a little super glue under each one as I went.
This is what it looks like all done. I didn't really measure the spaces out, and as you can see there's a bit of a bigger gap towards the bottom. It personally doesn't bother me, but you could lay them all out before gluing to get more even spacing. After that I took it outside and spray painted it all black.
After that was done I started on the oven.
This is the base of the oven. The back piece measure 2 1/4" wide by 2 7/8" tall and the side pieces are 2 3/16" wide by 2 7/8" tall.
I glued the side pieces onto the back piece.
I chose not to have functioning appliance doors, or a window into my oven. So I added a solid front piece that measured the same as the back piece. If you wanted to get creative you could add a window and make a fancy oven interior.
For the finish I used this Cricut True Brushed Vinyl. I bought the multi-pack as shown because I'm sure I will find other projects for the other colors. The pack contains one sheet of each color which is more than enough for what I did. I found it was pretty easy to work with and gave me the finish I was looking for.
I cut my pieces of vinyl out slightly larger than the piece I was covering, paying careful attention to which way the "grain" of the vinyl was going. I chose to have my grain go horizontally on my stove and vertically on my fridge. With the vinyl laying sticky side up, I carefully lined up the front of my oven face and plopped it on there.
Next step is to fold the sides back. Using a credit card or similar tool, you can squeegy out any air bubbles if you have them. I really worked on creasing the corners the best I could before folding the sides back.
I made a slice with my exacto knife straight down the corner and folded the excess side pieces over.
Then I folded the front piece over the edge. This needs to be done on the top and bottom of the oven body. I chose not to add any additional vinyl to the sides, but if you wanted a more finished look, you could wrap the entire thing.
The front panel/doors/drawer pieces are all cut out of 1/8" basswood. The total width of the pieces is 2 1/2". The top panel is 1/2" tall, the doors are 1 1/2" tall by a hair under 1 1/4" wide each and the bottom drawer is 3/4" tall. I used a mini scroll saw to cut my pieces. For the doors I cut the 2 1/2" width right down the middle, the saw blade putting it a hair under 1 1/4" wide. You will want it to be slightly less than that so that you have a visible gap between the doors when you assemble.
I followed pretty much the same process for wrapping the decorative front pieces. I made sure to pay attention to the grain of the vinyl and cut all my pieces larger than the wood pieces they were being placed on.
Doing the best I could to keep the vinyl taught, I wrapped the side around to the back.
To get a cleaner corner, I used my exacto knife to cut back the over hanging vinyl from the back and side and cut it straight out towards the front. It's really hard to put that process into words, but you can see what I mean in the photo above. I repeated this on all four corners.
You can trim any extra bits that may be sticking out where they shouldn't. Repeat these steps for the doors and drawer.
Once you have those all finished it's time to glue to the front of the oven base. Try to keep your gaps as even as possible. I used super glue to attach them as it seems to work a bit better with the vinyl than wood or craft glue.
Then I attached the stovetop. I did glue the burners on before attaching the top to the base.
These are the burners I used, they seem to be readily available at most miniature stores. They come in packages of 2.
Now for the fun parts. Or not fun, depending how you look at it! These are all the pieces I used to make my handles and knobs.
I started by figuring out the placement of my knobs. I centered the middle one and measured 7/16" between the rest. I used a mini drill bit to drill out the holes.
Above shows the assembly of the knobs. I used a dab of super glue right on the holes I drilled and pushed the headpin through. After that set, I folded the headpins down inside the oven. *Note* If you wanted to make an oven you could see inside, you'd want to cut the headpin down before inserting it into the knob panel.
All knobs in place!
This next part is probably the most tedious, at least it was for me. To make the handles I cut down my brass rods to almost the length of the doors and drawer (sorry, I didn't actually measure here). To make the end pieces, I cut sections of brass tube at about 3/16" length using my tube cutter. The tube cutter and brass rods were found at Hobby Lobby in the train/diorama aisle. I find the tube cutter can be a bit hard to use, the trick is to not over tighten it and work it a little at time, tightening a little more every few passes. I'm sure you could probably find other jewelry bits to make these as well, this is just what went through my head:)
Once the end bits were cut, I put a little dab of super glue on the end of the rod and pushed it through the tube stopping just at the other end.
To position where I wanted my handles, I laid the handles on the oven and marked it with a pointy picker tool I have.
I tried to center my mark on the brass tube.
Once all the holes are were marked I drilled out or should say attempted to drill out the holes for the pins. I broke two tiny drill bits in the process that ended up embedded in my doors. I finally gave up and just stuck my picker tool in pushed down a bit. I used more of the headpins cut down to about 1/8" and added a little glue to the end and stuck it in the hole.
I added a little glue to the top of each pin and attached the handles. It is probably easier to install all the pins first before attaching the handles, that way you can see if they are even (ish).
Fridge
The refrigerator was one of those times I did not document my steps, but I made it in the same manner that I did the stove. The difference being that the doors on my fridge are curved. I detailed these steps below.
For the doors of the fridge I used 1/16" basswood for the front and back, and 3/32" square dowels to achieve the curve. When cutting the fridge door pieces, you want to pay attention to the grain. For the back piece you want the grain going horizontally and the front going vertically. This is so that when you bend the door front, the back retains it's flat shape and does not curve also.
I used two dowels side by side and glued them centered on the back piece of the door. These need to run vertically with the length of your door.
I then glued the front piece to the center dowel pieces being careful to line up all the edges. Let this dry before the next step.
The last step to the door construction is to glue the front to the back piece. I put wood glue in between and taped them together. Let this dry thoroughly before removing the tape. I did sand side edges a bit to get them more square with the back piece. Then I just wrapped in the vinyl and attached to the fridge body.
You could use this technique to make a french door curved fridge too by simply adding a dowel to the inside door edge and one in the middle of the door and gluing down the outer edge. I had very limited space for a fridge, so I went with a single door.
For anyone who might be wondering the dimension of my fridge, it is 6" tall by 2 1/4" wide by 2 1/4" deep (that's including the door). The body was built the same as the stove, but with a flat top. The fridge door is 4" tall and the freezer drawer is 1 15/16" tall.
As always, I am happy to try to help you if you get stuck with any steps! Thanks for stopping by!
Original Post: January 29th, 2020
Comments
0 Comments
Leave a Comment