Stove Top Instructions

Yesterday, I showed you photos of the stove top Mr. Bean and I created for String Bean. As promised, here are the step by step instructions.

You will need: scissors, Elmer's glue, foam paper, contact paper, a shirt box, magic marker(s), cabinet hardware and screws that screw all the way into them with washers to fit, a ruler, and a pencil.

1. Pick a sturdy shirt box. I used a box from J. Crew. It is not a collapsible box which is a large reason why the box is so sturdy.
2. Cover your box with contact paper. I chose white, but you can use whatever color strikes your fancy. A couple of tips: cut your paper large enough to cover your box AND the sides (so the paper folds over to the inside of the box). Peel the paper back and lay the box on the paper, not the paper on the box. It is much easier to manage this way. You will need to cut the paper to fold over the corners. (Luckily you have the top and the bottom of the box, so if you mess up--you've got another one ready to go!)
3. Cut your burners out of the foam paper. You'll need to find something round and trace it onto the foam paper with a pencil. I used one of the Gerber toddler snack cans. Depending on the size of your box and the size of your child's pots/pans, you can determine whether your stove top should have 2 or 4 burners.
4. Draw detail on your burners. Use your magic marker, but be careful not to smudge the ink. It takes a few minutes for the ink to permeate the foam and it will smear if you touch it too early.
5. Measure out the placement of your knobs. We used our ruler to find the middle of the box and planned our burner placement from there. We were also careful to make sure we found the center of the side measuring up and down so they would be level across the front of the box.
6. Punch holes for the screws. I put Mr. Bean on this task because his strength is greater than mine. He pushed the screw through the marked spot so we had little holes there for later when we had to thread the screws through the cardboard.
7. Plan out the knob settings. Using your pencil, plan out how your knob gauges will read. This took a few attempts because we initially didn't plan for how large the knob was. Be sure to look at your pencil markings with the knobs placed over them before you write over them with marker. Don't forget to make the mark on the knob to point out how high the burner is on.
   
8. Draw with marker the knob settings. Like the foam paper, the magic marker takes a couple minutes to dry. Test it out on scrap paper, first. Erase any extra pencil marks when complete. (Note: be sure to test out your pencil and eraser on a scrap of contact paper as well. It took us a couple of tries to find an eraser that did not leave a smear on the contact paper.)
   
9. Affix the knobs to the box. We decided putting a washer on each screw was the best thing to do because we did not want our two year old to be too aggressive with the knobs and ull the screws through the cardboard. Test out the turning of the knobs so you know if you need to tighten or loosen the screw. (Note: You likely will need to tighten your screw from time to time as your child plays with their new stove top.)
10. Adhere the burners to the stove top. Time will tell whether Elmer's glue was the best glue to use on this part of the craft, but so far, so good! Make sure you put lots of glue all the way to the edges of the burner and covering most of the surface area for a good seal. Allow plenty of time to dry.
    
11. Sit back and watch the magic! Hopefully your little one will enjoy the pretend play and will make all sorts of treats for you to enjoy. This is a great opportunity to teach stove top safety to your kids. Pretend the burners are actually hot when they are on. Use pot holders to pick up hot pots and teach your child to turn off the stove top.

String Bean loves her new stove top!