Kitchen Island Makeover

I am so excited to share my DIY kitchen island makeover with you today! It had been a while since I had done anything new in my kitchen. It was October, to be exact, when I made over the vintage bar cart for my kitchen. The kitchen in this house was the first thing I worked on when moving in. It wasn’t a horrible kitchen, but certainly far from my dream kitchen. And I am basically just trying to make this kitchen as good as it can be without a major renovation, because this is not our forever house, and we will not be tearing out this kitchen and starting from scratch.

The first thing I did in the kitchen was to paint the cabinets. They used to be the golden oak cabinets that everyone had in their homes during the 90’s. I painted them buttercup yellow, which I like. It really gave the kitchen a different feel. Next I painted my faux subway tile backsplash, which I still love to this day. I also made my DIY no sew café curtains, replaced the faucet, and painted the kitchen door black. After that, to be honest, I needed a break from my kitchen, because both of those jobs were very tedious and time consuming. I always planned on painting the kitchen island, but I finally did it last month during some of our last snow days of the winter. I made a nifty collage below for you to see of the island before and after.

I debated back and forth so much about what color I should paint the island, and in the end I decided to go with trusty old white. I already feel like there is a lot of color in this room with the café curtains, the yellow cabinets, and the blue bar cart. And I felt like white would really lighten things up in here.

As you can see, I also decided to remove two of the cabinet doors. One of them was broken and every time we opened it, it fell off, and the other was on its last legs, so off they came. If it were in our budget, I would love to get a completely new island- and maybe some day we will, but for now, this one is looking so much better!

I did not sand the finish off this island before painting it. The wood was very natural, and I think at most it just had polyurethane or something of the sort on it. I just cleaned it really well with a deglosser.

The paint I used for the outside of the island was Behr Marquee Semi Gloss interior paint in cameo white. But before I painted it, I first gave it a nice coat of Kilz primer. After that was dry, it took two coats of paint.

I wanted the inside of the cabinets to be a contrasting color, so I decided to use the same grey paint I had used to paint the vanity in our master bathroom. I really liked the paint itself, and the color, plus it kept me from having to spend money on more paint, and I was able to use what I already had. The grey paint is Behr Premium Plus flat paint in the color Suede Gray.

There are two barstools that fit under the island right here, but I have not painted them yet. The plan is to take them outside and spray paint them, but at the time it was snowing, so I will get to that sometime soon since spring has sprung! I am thinking of making them a different color than the island, or doing something interesting with the seats, we’ll see. This island can fold down, but we leave it out at all times.

After all of the paint was dry, I waxed the entire island instead of using polyurethane. I had waxed my bathroom vanity, and I really like the finish of the wax. And so far the vanity has held up really great, so hopefully this island will too.

I don’t love the stainless steel top on this island, at all. It is just so hard to keep clean and it scratches easily. I would love to add a new top, maybe a rustic wooden looking top or something.

I added a metal basket to the top left shelf, and it holds Mr.7 Year Old’s cups. This metal basket is temporary, I would like to find a few matching baskets to put on all of the shelves.

Except for the bottom right shelf, which is the perfect fit for our juicer. This juicer hasn’t had a home since we bought it, so I am glad to have a designated spot for it now. And it is the perfect fit! I just had to raise the shelf above it a couple of notches.

I am very happy with the way this island turned out, and I am glad I went with simple white. It adds the perfect contrast in the kitchen. Dare I say that this kitchen is almost finished? It is getting pretty darn close. We think we are going to have to replace the back door though. There is a large gap between the door and the frame that we had to use weather stripping to fill in, but that is just a temporary solution. So this summer we will probably buy a new door. I really like the look of the all glass door we currently have, so I will probably buy a door very similar. And it sucks because I have painted both the inside and the outside of this door, and I am going to have to start all over again. I am also on the hunt for a couple of new rugs for the kitchen, so I think those will be the last two things we do in here, unless we eventually do something with the counter, like replace it (I really want to). I am really going to have to work on the husband hard for that one though. Right now he has his sights set on replacing the fence in the back yard though. I know it needs replaced, and it will make a huge improvement out back, but there are so many other things inside that I would rather spend money on!

I would love to know what you think of our kitchen island makeover. Please drop me a note in the comment section!

Have a great week!