Make a play store from two IKEA knagglig boxes
Hi guys, hope you are all keeping well a few weeks into the lockdown. We are all good here but I sure miss all the playgroups, play dates and park play Kiki used to do! She seems to cope well with all the changes but there are two things she asks me about every single morning. She wants to know if we are going to see her bestie and his mum (sorry kid its video call playdates for the foreseeable future) and if we go shopping. Kiki loves to help me put groceries in our basket, load them on the conveyor belt and her favourite bit, using my card for a contactless payment. She also loves going to her favourite cafe for a Swedish bun and a warm milk but as all of that isn’t going to happen any time soon I thought I build her a little Kiki shop!
As I can’t go shopping for materials I thought I would have a look in my shed instead and see what I could find to make the play shop. I remembered I had two IKEA Knagglig boxes left I put on my work bench for a bit of storage, they would make the perfect shop base. If you have been following the blog for a while you know I LOVE the Knagglig box, I really should do a round up post soon as there are a lot of Knagglig hacks on my site!
I did a little sketch of what the shop could look like and as you can see Kiki helped with a few scribbles too :) I just needed a bit of timber and fabric, I had some thin planks left from a previous build that would do, ideally I wanted a slightly thicker timber but the 30 mm wide and 10 mm thick planks is all I had. I have a massive fabric stash so finding a nice pattern wasn’t tricky either. I love shopping in my shed!
In my drawing I used the crates on their sides but when I put them next to each other I thought having them upright worked better. First step is building a frame that sits under your boxes. From your planks saw two pieces of 22 cm and two pieces of 62 cm. Sand the cut ends smooth and glue and nail together so you have a frame the same size as the bottom of the two crates.
Also cut four lengths of 140 cm, make a mark on 10 cm from the bottom with a pencil. Line you frame up with the pencil mark and glue and screw in place. Predrill the holes to prevent your wood from splitting.
Attach all four side planks, place your crates on the frame and screw the frame to the crates. Two screws per plank is enough, the best place to screw them together is where the crate has the square piece of timber, the wood is thickest there so you can use longer screws, making your build sturdier.
You now need to build the top frame, from your planks cut two pieces of 66.5 cm and two pieces of 24 cm. Line a longer piece up to the front of your shop and have the side hang over 1 cm on each side. Glue and screw in place, once again pre drill the holes to prevent your wood from splitting. Do the same with the other long piece on the back. Slot the side pieces in, pre drill the holes and glue and screw in place. You can see I used a clamp to keep them in the right spot while screwing the plank in place.
You can use one or two screws to attach your crates together for extra stability. I wanted one of the crates to have an extra shelf, so I cut two pieces of timber to 21 cm and screwed them in the middle of the inside of the crate. Your shelf plank needs to be 22 x 29 cm, I didn’t had a large enough piece so I used two planks instead. Glue and screw these to the inside holder.
Now the shop is done give it a good sand and a lick of paint. I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint on Pure, let the first coat dry before applying a second coat of paint.
To make the canopy you need two pieces of fabric of 62 cm wide and 70 cm long, my fabric is from Cloth and Candy. Put both pieces of fabric on top of each other and to make the scalloped edge put a bowl on the short edge of your fabric and trace half circles. I only have scallops on the front of the canopy, I left the back straight. Cut the scallops out and put your fabric on top of each other with the right sides facing, pin in place. Sew together but keep 10 cm open on one of the long sides so you can turn your fabric the right way round. Turn your fabric right way round and fold the seam allowance of the open bit inwards, pin in place and over stitch the whole canopy on 0.5 cm from the edge.
To keep the canopy from falling off your frame cut four pieces of yarn/string/ribbon of 12 cm and hand stitch these in place where the canopy sits over the frame, on 22 cm from the short sides and around 10 cm from the long sides. Tie your canopy to the frame and your shop is finished!
Kiki sure loves her play shop! She keeps stuffing her backpack with groceries and then walks of saying “Bye, see you later” :D
The wooden groceries Kiki had in her play kitchen are perfect for her shop, most of them are from Aldi, as is the coffee machine. The baked goods came with a little tea set Kiki got for Christmas, I think they are from Lidl. The vegetables are from Ikea and the cardboard boxes came from my recycling. I’m going to keep some food packaging once we finished with it as after a good wash milk cartons, butter tubs and juice boxes are great to have in the little play shop. The wooden Fresh Finest Fruit box is an old one from H&M home.
When painting the shop I left the new shelf and the area around it unpainted, thought it would make a nice accent.
Look at Kiki perfecting her latte art skills! Although I do think she is overpricing her coffee :) I seem to have only one ‘K’ in my magnetic letter stash so the Kixi shop it is.
I really want to get Kiki a little cash register so she can do her payments too, if you know of a wooden one that comes with a pretend card reader let me know.
Kiki is slightly obsessed stuffing her backpack with toys and groceries and happily walks around with it on her back all day long. She always hands me the small rattan bag to use for my pretend shop. The dolls pram is a favourite for piling up the treasure in too, it makes for a perfect shopping trolly. Kiki’s pram is a homemade one, it’s an upcycled basket I did almost exactly a year ago. If you missed that tutorial have a look here.
Kiki’s shop is a little cafe today but I think I might change it up every so often. It would be a great book shop when I fill it with her favourite titles, a flower shop filled with faux flowers, a DIY store with all her wooden tools (maybe even some empty paint tins) or even a toy shop filled with all her stuffed toys. Do you have any other suggestions? I think I’m going to be having a lot of fun setting her shop up in the evenings :D
Let’s hope the shop will keep her entertained for the months of isolation to come! Please feel free to pin the image below for future DIY inspiration.
Keep well and safe, see you soon for another tutorial xx Hester
