When we bought our home, the island was this dinky little thing in the middle of the kitchen. It was entirely too small and too close to the stove and cupboards. We decided right off the bat that we would move it about 6 inches into the dining area, and build it up to make it more functional.
We bought this super cheap kitchen cabinet at Home Depot and beefed it up. WARNING: This is a cheap, flimsy, poorly made cabinet. My husband had to enforce it like no other, and we will also be replacing the drawer glides.
We needed the island in place to finish our flooring, so we lived with our island and half a countertop for about a month. My kids kept climbing down into the cabinet and driving me crazy.
We put the cabinet side by side, and moved it back 6 inches. Then my husband proceeded to build a box around the whole structure to strengthen it.
We lined it with a plank board from Home Depot, and added 1x6's along the bottom and 1x4's up the side to give it some moulding character.
We also splurged and got granite! During all of the home projects we have done, we haven't tackled countertops because we couldn't afford to. In this house the countertops were WHITE laminate, stained like crazy, and awful all around. We knew we wanted to replace them and decided to go with granite. It looks amazing!
My next step is to add hardware to my cabinets.
