The kitchen island needs love

So the title of this post is "The Kitchen Island Needs Love", and by Love I mean, it needs to be destroyed and a new one needs to be made to take it's place!! There is a Jenaire stovetop on here that we've never used and it just gets extra dirty and collects "stuff". Since baby is coming soon (it's now April 3rd and baby is due May 28th) I figured it was time to get this project wrapped up so we don't have to think about it when we're busy with other things.




So here is the ugly CURRENT island. I hate it. When we first moved in I cut out an area where there was cabinet storage and I made room for a small beer fridge for Eric. That worked out well for awhile, but we're short on storage. So I decided to make my own plan.




 
Here is my plan in progress. We still have to install the second sliding drawer above the other sliding drawer (both found at Habitat Restore for $5 each!). Then I need to make the cabinet doors to go in front of that area. Eventually we'll have to figure out what color to paint (or stain) the island, and possibly put either wainscotting or shiplap on the front of it (the flat side, which is where the bar stools will go). And then lastly, we need to get a countertop for it. That's been the biggest thorn in our side so far, is figuring out what to do about the countertop because it needs to match the rest of the house plus the coloring of the other countertops in our kitchen, which happen to be RED. (That might sound awful, but I actually really love the red!)

This is the end (the end facing the front door) which is a bookshelf for all of our cookbooks that currently reside on our kitchen countertops and take up space. Underneath, on the very bottom of this, there should still be ample room for the cat's food, which I'm also pretty psyched about because we can still keep it out of the way, and perhaps less noticeable than it currently is.

Anyway, future posts will include the final product. Hopefully we'll get this sucker done SOON!