My Island Dreams Don’t Involve Balmy Breezes

I wrote last week about how I’ve been hunting down the perfect kitchen island. I had looked at an island from Craigslist, rejected it and then stopped at an estate sale on the way home. My friend Sara was also at the estate sale, and she told me about the kitchen island she had constructed from chrome metro shelving and a piece of butcher block. Sara is super creative and a fantastic seamstress, so I knew I needed to see this for myself. A few days later I finagled an invite to her house, and camera in hand, invaded her kitchen.

Sara’s kitchen island for her “One butt kitchen.”

Sara calls her kitchen a “one butt kitchen,” referring to the small space and apparent frequency of bumping butts when more than one person attempts to work in the kitchen. Luckily my kitchen is more like a “four butt kitchen,” so I envisioned a larger island. Sara had bought used metro shelving at a restaurant supply store, adding a few new components such as the wheels. The butcher block top was bought elsewhere, with holes drilled to accommodate the posts.

I drove that afternoon to Rose’s Restaurant supply to scope out the prices and availability of used shelving, and was less than impressed. There was only one shelf piece without rust, and didn’t relish the task of buying one piece at one store and another across town. I wanted the kitchen island complete before Thanksgiving’s mega cooking spree.

My husband pointed out that we already had a large metro shelving unit in the closet of our downstairs bedroom, but I didn’t really want to cannibalize it, as it was in use by the Japanese teaching intern who’s living with us. Sure, he’s in Japan at the moment, but I didn’t think it would be very nice to remove his storage. But then I took a second look at at and realized that there was actually enough shelving for my kitchen island and his stuff.

The butcher block top I knew would be cheapest from Ikea, although I did put the question out there on my Facebook page for other ideas. My friend Bryony responded, saying she had a large butcher block table top in her basement which had been used for their kitchen island, but had since been replaced by granite. It did have a big chunk cut out from where the cooktop was, but I was welcome to come take a look at it. Sadly, the available footage was too small for what I needed, but we had a lovely couple of hours bonding over our shared love of frugality, (her house was 58°, there was laundry on an indoor rack and her cup of tea was reheated, although mine was fresh.)

Okay. I had explored the non-Ikea options, it was now time to admit defeat and drive over to the mega mall/mecca of Scandinavian design. I had been over earlier in the week on a fact finding mission and knew exactly what I wanted, which was a the Numerär birch 49-5/8″ X 25-5/8″/ 1-1/2″ thick butcher block. I brought some muscle, (my husband) and the kiddos and even fed them from the cafeteria. (Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes for the adults and breaded chicken and fries for the kids.) We scoured the scratch and dent department to see if they had any butcher block, and then finally shelled out the $89.

Once home, it was a matter of maybe an hour to assemble the shelving and drill the holes. And now I have exactly the kitchen island I want. And my vintage dinette table? It’s on Craigslist for $100.

My new kitchen island! I had my husband orient the butcher block so there’s seating at one end. The stool was sitting unused in the basement!

Katy Wolk-Stanley

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”