Mud/Sand Kitchen

With the success of my last two instrucables I thought I'd share another of my recycling projects. Making things from discarded materials is a real passion of mine and I get a great kick out of making items that have already had a life, live again as something new and exciting !.

With this project I decided to create a couple of mud ( or in this case sand) kitchens for use at a school.

Everything was sourced from local demolition yards, picked up off the side of the road or just stuff I had lying around from things I'd dismantled previously !

To make the mud kitchens, used pallets are your best friends ! The amount you'll need depends entirely on the size of the mud kitchen you want to make. The more you can get that are a similar size and type the better but it also pays to have some smaller odd shaped ones to fill gaps easily.

For my project I used

10 x Pallets of various sizes

2 x Sinks ( 1 x single and 1 x double)

Cement sheet off cuts

Various timber off cuts

Tap fittings ( sourced from demo yard)

Different types of hooks (sourced from demo yard)

Batten screws (various sizes) these are great as they are easy to drive in and hold much better than nails as the kitchens are outside.

When you have all your materials it's just a matter of lining up the pallets into the basic shape that you want and then screwing it together. This is where sourcing similar sized pallets really helps as they match up much better. If you don't have this luxury then try to cut the pallets along the timber where they are nailed (see photo) as this will make joining them much easier.

This bit is where the uniqueness of your design can shine and no two mud kitchens will be the same which is great !

Next step is to create your bench top. I was lucky to have some extra timber left over from another project that I could use but you could easily demolish more pallets to the get the timber you need.

One mistake I made was to fill the whole bench top in and then I had to cut half of it away to fit the sink ! Don't be too concerned if you only fill in half the bench top initially and then fill in the gaps when the sink is in.

At this point I also added some chalkboards that I made from some cement sheet off cuts and painted with blackboard paint.

I also decided to create an oven in one of the mud kitchens and make up some boxes to store things in. Again everything was made from off cuts that where lying around the workshop.

The stove tops and oven knobs are just round pieces of wood painted black and the oven doors are just off cuts screwed together and hung on hinges.

A shelf is another good option if you want to add it but isn't essential.

I added a heap of hooks of various styles to hang things on that I picked up from the local demolition yard.

The last few steps are to cut a hole to fit the sinks in and then move the kitchens into position.

The hole for your sink depends on the type and size of the sink that you have but remember to allow enough space on either side to secure it down. I also fitted some old tap fittings I sourced to make it look more realistic but they don't actually do anything !

The kitchens end up being pretty heavy so you'll need help to move it into position. The ones I made backed up to a sandpit so I secured them to it but the are really to heavy to move far.

This was a great project and cost almost nothing to make ! The kids have used it continuously since it was constructed and I recently added a border and some cable reels I found on the side of the road to keep the sand in and give them some tables to work on.

Have a go and see what you can create with what you have lying around !!

One persons trash is another persons treasure after all !