island

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Every time I post about my kitchen, it seems that you guys love the DIY kitchen island the most.

And I love that you love it the most.

That piece is pretty special to me.

So special that I regularly threaten to be laid out on it when I die.

{Insert Grunt Labor rolling his eyes here.}

If you have read about the full kitchen ~~makeover~~ renovation, you know it has come a really long way. We knocked down walls, moved appliances, painted cabinets, took out cabinets, dealt with rude plumbers and much more.

And it was all worth it.

So, here is how we built our DIY kitchen island.

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DIY Kitchen Island

First off, I apologize for the lack of photos of us actually building it. I was pregnant during the process (which was an adventure) and honestly, after it taking a couple hours to figure out how to build it, I wasn’t sure if it would even turn out well.

Luckily, I was wrong.

The good news for you is that since it did take us a few hours and a few curse words and few cross looks to figure it out, we figured out it was actually pretty easy in the end. So, really if you have basic DIY skills, you can build this island.

First off, let me give you the dimensions:

It’s five feet long, two feet (and a smidge over) wide and right at about three feet in height. For us, its the perfect size. It functions as a great workspace, we can eat breakfast at it, but it doesn’t take over the entire kitchen.

Here’s the materials we used:

The legs are old porch columns we purchased from a local architectural salvage store. If you can’t find salvaged porch columns, you can always find them at Home Depot or another local hardware store. We made a frame of 2x4s to go around the columns at the top and at the base. We used wood screws to attach all the 2 x 4s to the columns.

The bottom shelf is barn wood that came from my great grandfather’s farm. After the frame was completed, we just used a finish nailer to nail the barn wood into both sides of the 2 x 4s.

The top is the same countertop material that is in the rest of the kitchen. We did add some 1 x 4s between the 2×4 frame on top (underneath the counter) to give the countertops a little more support.

The screws weren’t too noticeable at the bottom, but were at the top. So, after the countertop was installed, we added decorative trim around the top to hide the screws. Its the same trim we used on our built-in bathroom shelving.

A coat of white paint and my barstools make it complete.

After we finally got our dimensions figured out, it took about an hour (without the countertop – we had pros put that in) to construct.

All in all, excluding the countertop, we have less than $100 in it. If you didn’t want a regular countertop, like ours, you could always just opt for wood.