DIY Kitchen Island

The first thing we did in our new home last year was to redo our guest bathroom. Since then, the old bathroom cabinet has been sitting in the garage. I've really wanted a kitchen island, but the cost of an island or even a new cabinet is so high! So we decided to convert the old bathroom vanity cabinet into a kitchen island...Which is a lot of work.

First of all, it has holes in the back, from the bathroom plumbing. Second, it had some old water damage on the bottom righthand of the cabinet.
It also had become the testing ground of the many stains we considered for our kitchen cabinets, as you can see in the dark patches below.

And the doors themselves had been painted and stained three times over and polyurethaned.

So just the prep work for this project is prodigious, but the fact that we already own almost all the supplies needed for it won me (and eventually Mike) over.

First we had to strip the cabinet doors. It took two to three coats of paint stripper and much, much scraping. It was kind of fun, as the paint and stain come off like skin. Then we also had to strip the paint off of the cabinet itself and remove the old moldy kickboard. This was followed by some trisodium phosphate cleaning and some deglossing with liquid sander. Man, I'm so tired off those steps after doing them on so many pieces of furniture!

Mike bought and cut a piece of wood to act as the back of the island, to cover the old plumbing holes. Then he used the plywood from our kitchen cabinets to cut a base for the counter.

Next we painted the cabinets the same color that we painted the cabinets. Now what's left? Antique the cabinets and doors, install the hardware, tile the top with our leftover granite tile from the kitchen countertops, add a wood trim around the edges, and install the two columns I bought for it. Whew! I wonder why Mike wasn't eager to start this project...

More to come once more steps are complete!