Island Design: Round 3

I’ve made a few purchases for the kitchen island. I bought the pair of cabinet doors and a single baluster. I also ordered 4 Queen Anne legs from Van Dykes. They look just like the legs on the eHutch but they are only 5-inches high instead of 8-inches high.



The single baluster will go in the corner where the shelves are. At this point I am planning on a single shelf. Along with the bottom area of the opened corner there will actually be 2 shelves for storage. The baluster will be used to give strength to the open corner and secure the outside corner of the shelf.

I’ve also been giving some thought to what I’ll be using this for. Obviously it will a work station and a place to sit, but what sort of work. Because of it’s proximity to the stove it will largely be a place for cutting veggies, draining pasta, and that sort of thing, but not so much for clean-up. With this in mind I will want to store knives and chopping boards at the island, and I may want a place for spices. I guess it would also be nice to have a garbage disposal at this sink.

With the current design the single cabinet that will be accessed by the doors will be 31-inches high, 20-inches deep, and 24-inches wide. With a sink hanging down in the space, and with a garbage disposal attached, and all the other plumbing, there won’t be room in there for much else. I could maybe have a magnet strip on the inside of one of the doors to hold knives, but that’s about it.

I’m also thinking about trying to incorporate a spice rack in to the shelf area somehow. The spice rack is, after all, the quintessential DIY woodshop project. Another option is 2 or 3 of the thin vertical shelves (racks) for storing chopping boards. I’ve never been a big fan of that idea from a sanitary point of view. The idea of damp chopping boards in the small space that is hard to clean is not all the appealing. Something for chopping boards seems like a good idea, though.

The last idea is to mill drain grooves in to counter top. The sink will be under mount, and if I have some tapered grooves leading in to the sink on one side you can use it to drain things with out tying up the small sink. This of course, brings up the question of countertop material, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Here is my crappy MSPaint drawing of the current rendition.


Click here to see an earlier version.

End Round Three