Kitchen Island

My wife and I wanted a large island in our kitchen to increase the amount of countertop surface area. We wanted it to be a bit of an accent piece, so we decided to go with a green color and dark brown butcher block countertop to add some color and warmth to the kitchen.

For storage, we opted for drawers over traditional cabinets. We also decided on doing inset doors, which proved to be quite a challenge for me. They're not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out! I made all of the drawers out of 3/4 ply. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably do a combination of 1/2 for the sides and 3/4 for the front and back. That being said- they are sturdy! We used BlumMotion under mount drawer slides, which have a solid, smooth glide and soft-close.

The cabinets and drawers themselves are made from 3/4 plywood. I built the entire carcass in 4 pieces- The toe-kick, the two side shelves, and then the big central piece. I didn't do any fancy joints for the drawers, but I rabbeted/dadoed most of the joints where it felt necessary. The countertop consists of two prefabricated Hevea Wood Butcher Block countertops joined together.

We wrapped the ugly metal support post in plywood and then trimmed it out to match our cabinet doors and drawers. This also allowed us to run the necessary wiring for our microwave (the open space top right of the 'face' of the island)