Dream Kitchen Island DIY On A Lemonade Budget Phase 1 – Getting Started

We’re taking it back to where it all began. Before the kids, before the semi-annual major projects, we were two newly weds with a dream to turn our 1970’s Shag Pad into our Dream Home. We’ll look back at our major renovations and I’ll share some of our favorite projects and the missteps we made along the way to help you avoid some of the same mistakes we made.

I’ve had many people ask about our kitchen island and it is one of our favorite DIY projects and overall addition to the house. On top of tripling the counter space in our kitchen, adding much needed additional storage and giving us a place to enjoy eating and entertaining in our kitchen, we designed and built a customized kitchen island base ourselves…for under $80! We did decide to add granite to our island, which definitely upped the entire cost of the project, but creating an affordable and custom kitchen island can be done and we will show how we created the centerpiece for our kitchen!

Before we started designing our kitchen, we started doing a lot of research on styles, colors, layouts, etc. and started pinning, clipping and saving pictures for our wish list (ok, let’s be honest, I did all the scheming). I wanted a lot of counter and cabinet space, granite counter tops, shelving for cookbooks, extra seating in the kitchen and and a gigantic kitchen island as the centerpiece. I showed the hubs my vision board and when I asked how we should get started he chuckled and told me to “buy a lottery ticket” – he’s hilarious.

The Inspiration

How expensive could it be to add a few cabinets and some shelving?  I measured the space I was intending to cover did a few online searches for large kitchen islands and was pretty defeated with my results. The kitchen islands you could purchase from home and furniture stores were way too small for what I was envisioning and knew we would probably need to look at doing some custom work. Talking to some stores and custom cabinetry places, they were pricing out islands that would cost us well over what we were budgeting for the entire kitchen remodel project so my dream kitchen island was getting farther out of reach.

I’m born a Taurus and can be a bit on the stubborn side and don’t like to be told that I can’t do anything so after an overnight pity party and trip down the Pinterest rabbit hole, I awoke with new energy and determination to find a way to make my Dream Kitchen Island a reality. We could totally build a kitchen island ourselves!

One problem…we were not skilled woodworkers and had no idea what we were doing. But I was convinced we could tackle the project and then the real work started…convincing the hubby that my idea was brilliant and that we (okay, more him) could pull it off! I may not have much patience, but I am very persistent and so I started casually bringing up diy kitchen islands every night and showed him hundreds of tutorials of how easy it could be (he wasn’t as convinced as I was). I even came up with an ideal design that I knew we could pull off and even drew up a couple layouts for him and laid copies around the house, leaving up tutorials on our shared computer (subliminal messaging at its best) and even emailing him great ideas that I had found.

Getting Started

Slowly I wore him down enough to where he told me that if I could find a piece to get us started, he would consider building an island and we could start planning a kitchen remodel. Little did he know that I already had a plan and had already started searching for pieces that we could use to get started :). Then one Saturday, I convinced him to check out the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. They have all sorts of donated items from doors and windows to furniture, lighting and more. Several contractors and home remodelers take materials that they remove from houses that they are working on and donate it to ReStore so they can resell and give the proceeds to Habitat for Humanity. Such a great cause, so it was easy to convince Brian to stop in and take a look. They get new items daily, so you never know what you are going to find. It’s kind of like an adult treasure hunt and sometimes you can score great deals (thus beginning a newfound passion). After looking around for awhile, I steered us over to the kitchen and bathroom section and was excited to find not one, but two pieces of cabinetry that were in great shape!

They both appeared to have come from kitchens and all of the drawers and doors opened and closed nicely…even Brian was pretty impressed with the quality of each pieces. Then we started looking for prices. The first piece had a strip of tape on top that said $40 which we thought wasn’t bad at all. The second piece didn’t have any markings and when we asked, they said we could have it at the same price. I couldn’t believe it! This piece was twice the size and in better condition – the hubs was sold and we bought the bigger piece.

There was just one problem…it definitely would not fit into my Escape. Whoops! Have I ever mentioned that I am a lot like my mother? This is one of the traits we both share…we have gut feelings and can be impulsive in our purchases before completely thinking about the logistics about getting our purchases back to our house. So I called her and our conversation pretty much went like this:

S – “Hi Mom, what are you doing?…”
M -“Oh, we just got done golfing and are heading back to the house…whyyy?” (Mom)
S -“Well…we found this really great piece at ReStore and really want to show it to you…oh and we can’t fit it into my car.”
M -“Well I guess we can stop by on our way home to see it…” (Mom)
S -“Great! Because we already bought it and the store is closing so we are sitting in the parking lot right now with it and not really sure how we’re going to get it home!”
– Silence – In the background I can almost hear my dad rolling his eyes “We’re on our way!”

Brian just shakes his head at me and rolls his eyes because he hates taking advantage of my dad and his pickup truck, but knows that between my mom and I, we don’t really take no for an answer. I think that is why we get along so well…he gets me – er, puts up with me (same thing).

My parents arrived soon and we were able to get our new purchase home and I think we even impressed my dad with our find (even if he wouldn’t admit it). Here are some more pictures of how it looked when we brought it home:

Time to Paint

The piece we purchased had been a bottom corner piece in a kitchen and once we measured the piece, we decided to cut out the right corner of the piece so we were left with just the three drawers and doors. We knew we were going to add some sort of bookshelf to one side so this would free up more space and we could finish off the cut side later. The next thing we did was take off all of the doors and drawers and prime and paint the shell of the piece along with the doors and drawers. We used Benjamin Moore Satin Impervo in the same white that we painted the rest of our kitchen with so we saved money there (Impervo is pricy!). *Side note: After living with it for several years and factoring in two toddlers and a black shedding machine, I wish we would have painted it an offsetting darker color but at the time I was obsessed with getting all the dark out of our kitchen and I wanted white on white on white. I’m seeing a future project brewing…don’t tell the hubs! 

I can’t stress this enough. If you are going to paint your cabinets, please remove the hardware and lay them on a flat surface. Oh, and make sure that you paint the back side first. Our recommendation – 2 coats primer, 2 coats paint. Use a good paint too, it really makes a difference and we haven’t had to touch up the cabinets yet and it’s been 5 years, 2 kids and counting (years, not kids – don’t get crazy!) Patience is key, you want to make sure they are totally dry before flipping them over. We only did one coat of primer and one coat of paint on the insides of the cabinets and I wish we could go back and add in those second coats.

We let the paint set for over a week before we brought the doors back inside which gave us time to plan out the next phase of the island – the bookshelf. Don’t forget to check out Phase II and Phase III of our Dream Kitchen Island DIY on a Lemonade Budget.

	Cost Per Piece	Total Cost
Kitchen Cabinet	$40.00	$40.00