The kitchen island re-do

I finished staining the kitchen island a week ago.  I did the staining by myself, but Michael helped with changing all of the shelf and drawer liner.  It's time to show everyone our hard work.

I never remember to take good "before" pictures and I'm halfway into a project before I realize it.  This time, I remembered.

But then Ginger photo-bombed me.

The "before".

We would love to rip out all of this gross tile and update it as well, but, budget.  

I took a lot of befores!

I love this island because there is so much storage in it.  There are really deep cabinets on the front and more shallow cabinets on the back.  They are more shallow, but a lot taller because there are no drawers above them.

I keep "special" dishes that we don't use very often on the back side on the left.  When I opened this cabinet I realized that the brackets that held the shelf up had broken at some unknown point in time and the only thing keeping the entire thing from crashing down and breaking everything in there was one thin little tea cup on the left.  Way to be tough, tea cup.  Unfortunately I broke a black mug during the rescue.

I keep holiday and seasonal dishes on the right.

All of my pots and pans and salad bowls are on the front side on the left.

And all of my baking stuff is on the right.

Michael took the kids to Tucson for the weekend while I did the staining.  In hindsight I should have sent Ginger as well because she was attracted to the drops of stain on the floor.  Every time I turned around she was prancing her pretty little self on the drop cloth.

This was after coat #1.

After coat #2.

And after coat #3.  The tape is still on the floor.  I didn't actually ruin the floors.

Once I was done with the staining it was time to put all the stuff back.  I figured since everything was already out we might as well change the shelf liner too.  I'm sure that this liner (which is lining everything in the whole house and which we are slowly removing) has been here since the first owners moved in in 1995.

Before

After

I took pictures of 3 of 4 of the drawers after replacing everything.  I'm not quite sure how I missed the 4th, but I think you can survive without seeing it.

This is the "junkiest" drawer I have in the kitchen.

New liner on the shelves.  It looks so much better, I could just stare at it for days.

He agrees.

Before on the front side

ALL my baking stuff.

I was tempted to just leave the shelves with no liner, because this side has a divider in the middle and piping in the back and it was hard to work around, but we persevered.

I think I should buy some more muffin tins.  I probably don't have enough.

It was nice to reorganize as I put stuff back.

I also rearranged on this side and moved my salad bowls to another cabinet.

Oh, and check this out.  Michael changed out the white outlets for black outlets.  Now that he knows how to do it we'll slowly be replacing all of the outlets and light switches in the entire house.  It just looks SO MUCH better.

And finally.......ta-da!  

The finished island.

The back

Inside the back on the left.  I rearranged in here too.

Inside the back on the right.

Side by side comparison

Up next: A kitchen tour since we've lived here for 2.5 years and I've never done the official tour.