Today I am going to share with you how to make a puppet theater out of an old hutch or bookcase. I have found these are easy to find at any thrift shop, Salvation Army or Goodwill. Apparently people will keep the dresser and get rid of the hutch.
I found my hutch curbside and decided to rescue it. The first thing I did was clean it…GUHROSSSS! Then I took off the backer board.
It wasn’t stable enough to handle my three year old boy so I knew I had to stabilize it somehow. I got out some scraps of plywood and measured the width of the hutchy thing and that is how wide the top of my parallelogram is. Then I widened the bottom to give it the stability it needed.
Using a circular saw, I cut out two of them and screwed them into the sides of the puppet theater and I achieved the stability it needed.
Then using a 5/8″ drill bit I drilled holes in the sides and inserted a 5/8″ dowel rod (cut to size) for the curtains to hang from.
Next I sanded the whole piece down and gave it a coat of primer followed by two coats of red paint.
Then I decided to to use the backer board as a chalkboard on the front. I cut it down using a utility knife since it was just a thin wood composite. After primering it and painting it with chalkboard paint I nailed it in place with thin brad nails.
Since it did not cover the entire piece I cut some trim to frame it out using my miter box and saw. I just used the foam composite stuff.
Then I laid it out in place to make sure it looked perfect..and it did!
I sprayed the molding with black spray paint. Since there wasn’t anywhere to nail it in, I used Liquid Nails and clamped it in place. Some of the glue oozed out but I just touched it up after it was dry.
I made little curtains out of fabric I had on hand and hung them from the dowel rod.
You don’t need a hutch type thing for this project. Any small book shelf would work. This one I used an old laminate shelf and just propped it up higher.
The puppet theater is versatile too. It is now my son’s snack shop.
Bookcases are perfect for this project because you have the shelves in the back to store stuff…
If you make one let me know. I would LOVES to see it!
