Sprucing up the Kitchen Island

I was antsy for a project yesterday and chose the kitchen island as my unsuspecting target.

I had a little bit of cash, so I ran to The Home Depot and picked up some primed mdf boards.

It was serendipitous that I also found some bead board scraps for $.51 each

I wanted to get as much of the project done as I could before The Joe got home and felt obligated to help. I cut the bead board into strips using the table saw and tacked them to the top of the island.

 Then I made a paper pattern of what I wanted the supports to look like and cut 6 of them using the bandsaw.

That's when The Joe walked in the door and went to work cutting the angles of the shelves.
It's a good thing too! He's way more precise than I am. 

We put 3 shelves together before we screwed them onto the island and then cut extra little pieces to put in between so it looked like the support board was one long piece underneath the shelf.

Time to paint!

And here she is now.

Total project cost $25

Linked to:

I'll have a blue, blue Laundry Room~

I started out with a blue Laundry room. Blue as in sad. 

Complete with a sorry pile of clothes on the corner. 

The Joe was jumping for joy when I asked him to be included in this project.

He had no desire to spend his day off project-ing, but I could tell that was all just a ruse.

He secretly loved it. 

Ok, that's not true, he was openly annoyed, but helped me anyhow which was very sweet. 

First things first, come up with a plan. One that includes:

*Materials that we already have.

We are having a tight month and can't justify spending money on decorating the Laundry room.

Hmmm...that's fun. A litte challenging, but who am I to back down from a challenge.

We had 4'X4' sheet of bead board, a quarter of a sheet of mdf and a little bit of trim.

Oh, and a 2X2 that The Joe had turned into a device for leveling out the yard last summer.

We cut the mdf down to make a shelf, and saved the extra thin pieces to use for trim.

We hung the shelf by placing 2X2's under the edge, along the wall.

Next comes the beady board that we cut into 1' strips. 

We had to piece it together to make it work, but hey, that's the middle name of this project.

We cut the extra mdf strips to the same width as the mdf shelf and the 2X2 support, 

so it would feel more like one piece when we put it all together.

And then put the piece of trim across the front of the shelf, so you couldn't see the support boards.

Time for putty and paint!

I tried really hard to paint it a light neutral color. Really, I did.

I just couldn't help myself. The color temptation was TOO STRONG.

I love the new blue! 

I wanted to keep it pretty clutter free, so I didn't decorate it very much.

I did have to put up a sign, you know, just incase one of my house guests ever unsuspectingly stumbles into that room and can't figure out where they are.  We wouldn't want that to happen, now would we.