Kitchen Makeover – Building an Island

Welcome to week 3 of the the One Room Challenge! Does anyone else feel like time is flying by? This week was probably one of the most anticipated (nerve racking and exciting) for my mom, Barry, and I. Why? We tackled the island! If you missed week 1 and week 2, go back and catch up on those first. Do you want to see how to make a kitchen island out of base cabinets?

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In week 1, I pointed out a major short coming of this kitchen was the mass of open space in the middle. There definitely should have been an island here! The previous owner had an awkward small dining table in the middle, but this didn’t provide any additional storage or much needed counter space.

With my mom on board and totally excited about getting an island, I set out to find the best way to make this happen on a budget. The easiest approach would have been to buy a pre-made island, but with the space we were working with, that would have cost thousands, trust me, I looked. And have you ever known me to take the easy road? Did you see the shiplap wall we did in our master bedroom? I rest my case.

Anyway. Back to the island. My gut instinct was to build an island out of base stock cabinets. The only hesitation I had was the countertop. What would I use? An island needs to have finished edges on all sides. And since the kitchen already had granite, using a less expensive option could end up looking cheap.

I did what any natural born DIYer would do in this scenario and scoured  secondhand sites. And wouldn’t you know, I found a brown quartz island top for $200! These nice people were selling it because they were doing a remodel of their own. And lucky for me, the color worked well with the warmer colors we have going on in my mom’s kitchen. Win win.

Now that we solved the countertop dilemma, it was time to select base cabinets that would fit both the space and the island top. We decided on unfinished stock cabinetry so we could paint them ourselves. The pre-finished cabinets just didn’t jive with the existing cabinets. These came in at about $300. We used two 15 inch base  cabinets for the sides and one 18 inch for the middle. 

I would love to show you all how we installed the island in detailed steps, but that is going to be a very long post. Not sure if you heard, but I only have 3 weeks left! So be on the lookout for a full tutorial on how we built the island when the One Room Challenge is complete. For now, I will cover the overall island.

Next up, the island color. I love doing an island in an accent color and with all of the warm beige colors in the space, I felt like a dark island would be the perfect compliment. I used Fired Earth by Valspar.

Obviously there were a lot of additional steps involved, but we will cover those in the tutorial post. But for now, here is what the finished island looks like!

Kind of awesome, right? This is totally what the kitchen needed all along! And by making the kitchen island out of base cabinets, we saved a ton of money!

Join me again next week to see how the rest unfolds! We still need to address that awful skylight, add some lighting, and update the dutch door. Are you sure we only have three weeks left?!

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Don’t forget to stop by Calling It Home to check out all of the One Room Challenge projects!

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This post, Kitchen Makeover – Building a Island, appeared first on Garrison Street Design Studio.