Dresser Turned Kitchen Island DIY!
This week’s easy Thrifty Thursday DIY project, as seen on Good Day Sacramento: Dresser turned Kitchen Island! See the live Good Day Sacramento Thrifty Thursday by Thrift Town segment by clicking the below links:I’d been flirting with the same pin on pinterest for weeks. It haunted me in my sleep. It was there staring at me on my favorite Thrift Town pinterest board day in and day out. Call it a whim of ambition, but, I decided to go for it. Go big or go home, right? So after my decision was made, I let Good Day Sacramento know that would be my next Thrifty Thursday project…gulp…for the following week, on live TV!
First order of business; find a dresser or bookcase to use for the project. I scored this pitifully ugly one made of genuine laminate at Thrift Town on Stockton Blvd. in Sacramento, CA for $15.99. Rule of thumb when seeking the perfect dresser for this project, height is everything (ok, I’m biased as I’m almost 6 feet tall). Make sure it’s tall enough so you’re not stooped over when using it. Matching your counter height is optimum. However, don’t discount if it’s a few inches shy of your counter-top, it’s nothing adding a few wheels couldn’t cure, and now you’ve got yourself a portable island, perfect for parties!
I also scored these two bar stools that had seen better days, but for sure had a few good stories to tell, at the Stockton Blvd. Thrift Town location for $5.99 ea. I put one coat of Rustolium primer/paint spray paint on each, and now they can go a few more rounds.
Ok, got the dresser, got the chairs, got the fun accessories. Now off to Home Depot I go for the final pieces needed to REcreate my pin-vision.
Since I wanted the paint to stick, and not slide right off the laminate, I painted the entire unit with a primer coat. Once dry I painted the entire dresser with Behr’s ”dark granite.”
While that was drying I indulged my chalkboard fetish, and transformed an amazing frame I found at Thrift Town’s El Camino store location into a chalkboard masterpiece. I simply removed the glass and spray painted a think layer of chalkboard paint directly onto the glass. Once dry, I reinserted it into the beautiful frame ($8.99), scribed the word mangia (Italian word for eat), and twisted a screw into place in the center of the back of the dresser. Easy peasy, and ready for mounting in under 10 minutes.
Also, while waiting for the paint to dry, I tackled the tile counter-top. There’s lots of ways to implement this part of the project. You can use anything from peel and stick laminate squares (around $1 ea. at Home Depot), to tile with grout, butcher-block, cement, mosaic, etc. I chose to use glass tiles because they’re pretty and sparkle. Isn’t that how most girls make their most important decisions? In all seriousness, I wanted something I wouldn’t have to grout because I personally find grout to be messy. The glass tiles I could butt up against each other using only thin set and a trowel, wipe it off, and be done. With three kids, I’m a get in, get out kinda gal.
It was more economical to buy the tiles in sheets. I found some beautiful ones that would go great with the dark granite color, and lucky me, they were on clearance for around $5 a sheet/sq. foot. The downside of saving money by buying them by the sheet vs. individually was that I now had to pull each one off the mesh backing. This is tediously annoying, but keeping the end in mind, I carefully ripped each little sucker off one by one. 144 tiles later, I was ready to cement them forever into their new life using generous helpings of thin set layered onto a waterproof piece of wood that I found in the scrap wood section of Home Depot for all of a $1.01.
Tip: to determine how many much product (tile, etc.) you need for your counter-top, measure, measure, measure your surface, then measure the product you wish to use as your counter-top and do the math. You can waste a lot of money over buying things like paint, tile, etc. and suddenly you’re DIY is costing as much as a new product you paid full retail for.
I used heavy heavy heavy duty bonding glue (not Elmer’s people, more along the lines of Liquid Nails) to attach the now tiled wooden board to the dresser. I put my bedazzled clamps to work holding the board in place to the dresser while all adhesives dried, and went to work accessorizing my project. Red and yellow really pops against the grays and blues of the base, so I chose my accessories accordingly. I attached three cup hooks to of the side panels and hung things like spatulas and ladles. On the other side, I attached a paper towel holder, and of course on the back is my chalkboard.
Total cost of project, this includes dresser, accessories, bar stools, etc. $95.96. Total cost of a new kitchen island, minimum $400 and up. Yeah, pretty thrifty cool. Side note, special thanks to my dad who I called no less than ten times with “questions” and a few rants!
