Old Kitchen Island Made New

One of the kitchen projects that I am most proud of is our island. What's funny about this thing is that we almost didn't have it. The story goes like this....I purchased an entire kitchen's worth of cabinets from a husband and wife off of Craigslist. They were doing an entire house remodel and the kitchen cabinets had to go. I originally wanted the cabinets for our basement bar but I knew there were other pieces that I could find a home for. When I got there to tear out the cabinets, the husband told me that the island wasn't part of the deal (even though it was in the pictures online) and he was going to use it as a workbench in his garage. Long story short, I told him that I either I get the island too or I walk. As you can see, I got the island :)

The island started off with 4 doors along with two functional and two dummy drawers on each side.

Original Island Left Side

Original Island Right Side

Our intent is to slap a new countertop on this when we do the rest of the kitchen countertops and we know that we want to extend the countertop out to three feet in order to make it more of an eat at island vs a work island. With that said, I knew the doors and the drawers on the side with the eventual overhang would need to be removed. I moved the two drawers to the other side and made four functional drawers. The doors I removed all together and they currently sit in my garage waiting for another project and life.

Drawer Modification

I then proceeded to screw in some 2x4's where the toekick currently was. I did this because I eventually wrapped three of the sides with bead board panels and baseboard trim in order to make this look like a piece of furniture rather than an awkward island. Plus I really liked the look of it this way

Next up was the wood trim. I purchased some simple 1/4" x 4" trim from my big box home improvement store. I glued and nailed this trim to the edges of my bead board and filled in all holes and gaps with putty. The idea was to make it look like it was framed out.

The entire island got a coat of oil based primer and 2 coats of Rust-oleum Quilters White paint to match the rest of the kitchen. Ashley glazed the crevices in the bead board along with the edges and I sealed the entire thing with the sealant that comes with the Rust-oleum kit.

Up next? Just wrapping up the painting of the kitchen cabinets. Cannot wait to show that project off!