Island Dressing

So we had this island. It was very useful and we liked it a lot. But its "backside" needed a little work:

Just the unfinished back and sides of the cabinets. But I had a plan, or at least an idea that I had torn out of a magazine, and I showed it to Troy. He said, "I can do that." And off he started (a couple of weeks ago)...

We used OSB since we knew the surface would be painted. First a base layer which concealed all:

Then Troy piled layer upon layer to build my dream. Here we are "mocking it up" when my sister was visiting:

Then he dressed it up with some trim:

Then it was my turn. First some primer:

Troy thought it was really cute that I used a drop cloth to protect our subfloor. (An old shower curtain--they make great drop cloths because nothing soaks through. But nothing soaks up either, so you have to watch you don't step in a drip or spill.) Anyway, there was no way I was going to live with a messy paint job for a few months (or years) even if it was going to be covered up later.

The the real dressing--the gloss paint:

Remember I had to fight for it at Lowes? Totally worth it.

And finally, the corbels I found online a year or two ago:

They're a mismatched set and I still really like them. I'm a little unsure of the dark wood finish with the paint, but I'm sticking with it. (Besides, Troy won't let me paint them, even if I wanted to.)

This was a fairly quick project, partly because Troy was really gung-ho to get his part done. And partly because it's a nice small project and not a freaking giant 30 x 70' wall!! (Ok, sorry, flashback to working on the shop there. I've got a hold of myself now.)

The only snag was when I realized Troy did the base trim correct on one side, and for some reason a different way on the other side. When I gently pointed this out to him, he tried to convince me that it was ok and I would love it, but I soon talked him back to the side of reason. He pondered the fix over a day or two (at first he thought it would be really easy, but then he kept realizing how well he secured everything to everything when he made it and then it would seem hard again), and then did a very nice job of fixing it so I could finish painting.

As this is one of the first things you see from the front door as you look into the kitchen, I wanted to to be a real feature. I'm very happy with what we ended up with.