Finally! A working sink with running water for the IKEA play kitchen.
Justin’s 2 year old daughter goes to a Montessori-style preschool during the week, and the first thing she does upon arrival is walk over to the sink, dispense some soap, wash and dry her hands all by herself.
Which prompted the thought — if she can do this on her own at school, there must be a way to make the same thing possible at home.
They received a DUKTIG playset as a gift last year. All the parts, as we know, are for pretend play and nothing actually works.
Justin figured the toy faucet and basin were easy to remove and modify into a real working, fully functioning kitchen sink. And he did.
Yes! That’s running water. A real working faucet!
Working sink for the DUKTIG play kitchen
He started sketching out ideas until he came up with some thing that worked. All the modifications are non-permanent except for the drain hole drilled in the plastic play sink. It was also entirely self-contained and costs only about $30 in parts. All in, it took under an hour to install.
IKEA item used:
IKEA DUKTIG play kitchen
Other materials:
2-Gallon Water Jug (~$15.00)
Electronic Rechargeable Pump Faucet (~$15.00)
Optional Steel Grate for Drain Filtering (~$4.00)
Here’s how:
Basically, you’ll need to remove the faucet from the DUKTIG and replace it with the electronic water pump faucet.
Then, make a hole a the bottom of the sink for the water to drain.
The tubing for the pump goes into a hole drilled into the side of the 2-gallon jug.
Now for the drainage.
The storage space under the countertop is sacrificed for a 2-gallon water jug. In this option the water pours back into the jug. Probably not the best in terms of cleanliness but it requires less maintenance as the water is recirculated. You got to change the water as it will get dirty.
Justin also lays out a second circulatory system with two tanks at the base of the sink (one for clean water and one for drainage) on his blog.
And that’s all you need to do. Turn on the switch and watch it happen!
Complete the sink with kitchen accessories like a drying rack, scrub brush and toy kitchen utensils. Your child will have lots of creative play washing dishes, pans and learning valuable skills in doing a little “housework”.
Hop over to Justin’s blog to see the full tutorial of the IKEA DUKTIG play kitchen with working sink.
You may also like these DUKTIG hacks
#1 Digital timer that works
This modified IKEA DUKTIG play kitchen has a working digital kitchen timer (and shows the current time, when not counting down). In the end, it actually beeps! Did I mention that the oven is lit during the countdown? See the hack here.
#2 Play fridge to go with the kitchen
My daughter loves her DUKTIG play kitchen set, and was always asking for a fridge, which IKEA doesn’t sell. Figuring out how to hack a play fridge was the hard part, afterwards assembly was done in roughly 30 minutes.
The hack is very simple, but it looks wonderful and I’m very happy with it, and I love that the IKEA METOD (or SEKTION) kitchen doors match the play kitchen’s doors. See the DUKTIG play fridge here.
#3 Unusual ideas for the DUKTIG
The DUKTIG is quite the blank canvas and you can easily transform it into a myriad of play experiences. Chances are, if you’ve bought the toy kitchen, you would have searched Pinterest for hack ideas and found thousands of IKEA DUKTIG play kitchen pins.
For the more adventurous, here are a few ideas to inspire you to hack it into something much more than a play kitchen. See all 6 DUKTIG play kitchen ideas.