This project was an absolute Godsend. It was a kitchen island that I’d wanted for many years. After all, who doesn’t need more counter space and more cabinet space? My kitchen, according to the original building plans, was supposed to have an extremely small two stool island. My husband, Phil, and I elected to have that island excluded from the plans, as we had three children and figured we could add one that would better meet our family’s needs at a later date. Life kicked off, at that point, and in full force…kids, school, sports activities, jobs, etc.
A Vast Wasteland Where an Island Could Be
We made it for fifteen years with no island. Our home’s main living area is an open design that includes areas for living space, dining, and the kitchen. We had a large dining table in the dining area. So, there was no need for a table in the kitchen area. That left us with a lot of open space that looked like a big hole to me.
Kitchen Island Sorely Needed
To the rest of the family, it was apparently an unofficial wrestling arena. Phil and the kids met in that space for almost nightly MMA-style grappling matches. Every single time one of the kids had a friend over, they gravitated to the space for tussling of some sort or for riding Rip Stick skateboards or hover boards.
The Dilemma: Where Does This Go?
All jokes aside, in our classic L-shaped kitchen, cabinet space was the ultimate problem. Nobody likes clutter. But, without enough designated cabinet space, where do you store things? Items without a home tend to find their way onto much needed counter space or even in floor space around the perimeters of the room. This is certainly the case in a fully functional kitchen that sees homecooked meals prepared on a daily basis. I enjoy cooking meals from scratch, and our entire family enjoys eating them. Anyone who makes good use of their kitchen, can attest to the never-ending shortage of storage space.
My first solution was to include a prefab closet-type cabinet for food storage. That helped a great deal. It freed up a bit of space to better organize dishes and cookware. It did not address some of our other needs. There were small appliances that also needed a home, and I had nowhere to store kitchen towels or potholders. The answer was obvious. It was time for that island.
Something Like a Plan
I knew I wanted a kitchen island. I did not know exactly what I wanted it to look like, though. My husband said to let him know when I had it all figured out. But any careful planning would just make things too easy. So, we decided to begin with a prefab cabinet base and build out from there. Once you have a huge obstacle in your main living space, it becomes a priority to do something with it. And that’s just what we did.
Raising the Island…Kitchen Island That Is
The prefab base cabinet we chose was a kitchen sink base cabinet from Home Depot. It was 60” in length, 24” deep, and stood 34.5” high. I wanted my island to be taller than my existing cabinets, so my husband suggested raising it on feet or legs of some type. In hindsight I wish I’d let him go with blocks of 4×4 to create slightly sturdier feet. But I wanted something with some architecture and chose decorative pre-made table legs. I think we chose the 10″ legs thinking we could trim them if they were too long.
Once we were home with our cabinet, we looked at the bottom of this thing to figure out how in the world we were going to attach these legs. We only wanted to add about 6” to the height. We realized, however, that the legs would have to be attached to the backside of the cabinets skirting. The skirt itself added 6” up to the floor of the cabinet. This meant that some of the length we thought we’d be cutting away was going to be needed. We even had to add another inch. Luckily, adding that extra inch could be done by adding a block of wood to the top of the leg and then using the overhang of that block to screw the leg onto the under floor of the cabinet.
Tweaking the Toe Kick
The front of the cabinet offered another hurdle in that the existing toe kick needed to be enclosed for two reasons. First, it would just look awkward having the inset of the toe kick raised that high above the floor. And second, once we had the legs attached, they would have been visible. The legs could not be placed behind the existing skirt as we’d done on the backside of the cabinet. The offset of the toe kick would have required the front legs to be a few inches too far back throwing off the visual balance (to my eyes, anyway). So, we attached the front legs to the cabinet floor at the front of the existing skirt (at the back of the toe kick). Then my husband cut and attached some 2 x 4 blocks to be used as studs and enclosed the front of the toe kick with a 1 x 6-inch board.
Topping It All Off
For the top of this kitchen island, we chose some 18” cream colored marble tiles from our local Dirt Cheap Building Supply store. They were not too expensive and seemed very durable. These tiles were over a half inch thick and extremely heavy.
My husband cut a 3/4” plywood top and attached it to some 2 x 4 studs he had added to the cabinet top. We allowed a larger overhang on one end to allow for an extra bar stool. Phil and our son, Dalton, glued the tiles to the plywood with a strong adhesive similar to Liquid Nail. We did not want to grout this island top, so the tiles were tightly abutted.
We then covered the rough plywood and tile edges with decorative moulding. This moulding was attached with both adhesive and finishing nails.
Dressing Up the Kitchen Island
Boards (1” x 6”) were added to the bottom of the cabinet along the back and both ends to match the board used to enclose the toe kick. Now the bottom of the cabinet looked properly finished.
We used corner moulding to hide unfinished bead board panel edges. To add a final bit of visual interest, we cut some pieces of pre-packaged bead board panels to cover the backside and ends of the cabinet like paneling. We attached it using the adhesive and finishing nails. It turned out beautiful, especially after we painted it black and added white bar stools.
This new island added exactly what my kitchen needed. The gaping space in the room has been filled. I have storage space to hide all of my small appliances and more counter space for meal preparation. As an added bonus, we have more seating for our ever-growing family. And, not to worry, the wresting arena has been relegated to other areas of the house.
