kitchen island upgrade

Here is an easy way to add character to your kitchen island and save money.

We have a country style kitchen where all the cabinets were at one time a mixture of grimy oak and plywood. A few years ago I painted all the cabinets an off-white, which was a huge improvement. But more recently we wanted to bring a little bit of modern into the kitchen, while tying it into the existing style. So we decided to paint the island a deep grey and add some ornamental hardware.

This is what we did, and here is how you can upgrade your kitchen island on a dime:

Upgrade Your Kitchen Island with Paint

Cheap Update

Select a paint that will go well with the rest of your kitchen decor and paint the entire island.

I like to get my paints at a discount, so I always check home improvement stores, hardware stores and thrift stores for “oops” or slightly used paints. This is how I ended up with the dark grey for our kitchen island makeover. I got the backside and the legs of the island painted and my sister loved the color. I thought it was too dark. I especially thought it would be way too dark for the back side (the cabinet side) of the island which never gets the light streaming in through the windows.

Upgrade with paint

So we compromised. I painted the “daylight” side of the island the dark grey my sister liked, and the “dark” side of the island a much lighter grey. As you can see in this photo, the color on the whole kitchen island looks seamless thanks to the different lighting.

Add Architectural Embelishments

Architectural interest

Buy a couple turned table legs at a lumber yard or home improvement store (I got ours at a lumber yard on sale). Cut the legs at the top to fit under your kitchen island overhang. Prime and paint the turned legs. Attach the legs to island with brackets. You may want to add velcro pieces to the bottom of the legs to secure them completely.

Modern kitchen stools

Upgrade the Hardware

As a final touch, I changed the ivory pull knobs out for iron-looking knobs and added a couple wrought iron towel holders to the sides of the kitchen island for an extra punch as well as functionality.

Some time later, I painted the stools for the island a happy lime green to bring an even more modern punch to the whole kitchen.