12 Families Whose Kitchen Island Finally Made the House Feel Like Home

Most kitchen renovations start with cabinet painting and end with new countertops. These ones ended somewhere nobody planned for. A kitchen island that brought a teenager back downstairs. A backsplash finished the week everything changed. An interior design decision that turned out to be about more than just the kitchen. These families got more than a home renovation.

I decided to challenge myself with this kitchen island. It serves as a preparing/serving station and of course storage. Which in our small kitchen was well needed.
As we are renting, my top priority was to keep costs low & easy disassembly in case we decide to move on. Total cost was CHF 360 (around 400 USD) and took me (due to working full-time) a month from design to finish. The frame is pine, the top (if I am not mistaking) is oak. I am happy with how it turned out.

• Very nice work! One thing I learned from my kitchen redo was about cabinet and drawer organizing. It’s great to make bamboo or other inserts to help keep things organized.
  However, make sure the pieces are somewhat adjustable. It’s really a pain to find out the new silverware you got has longer or thicker handles. For plates and other dishes, make racks that hold plates vertically so you don’t have to keep unstacking the pyramid for a large plate.
  PS nice pup ya got there! © okilydokilys / Reddit

• My parents renovated their kitchen for the first time in thirty years. New countertops, cabinet painting, backsplash, kitchen island — the full interior design overhaul they’d been talking about since 1994.
  My dad called me the day it was finished. Said “come see the kitchen.” I drove for two hours. Walked in. It was beautiful — clean lines, good kitchen design, everything my mother had wanted for three decades.
  My mother was standing at the kitchen island crying. I asked what was wrong. She said “nothing.” I said, “Why are you crying?” She said, “Because we should have done this twenty years ago and we didn’t and now I’m standing here thinking about all the dinners that could have happened here.”
  My dad put his hand on her shoulder and said, “We’re having them now.” She cried harder. So did I, a little. My dad looked at both of us like we were completely unreasonable.
  He’s right. We’re also right. The dinners are happening now. That’s what matters.

• Can’t go wrong with Walnut. It looks lovely in any situation. © joeyjojoeshabadoo / Reddit

• You guys did great! I’m inspired. That is a wood top with that stick-on-marble-tape-stuff, correct? I can’t think of it’s name off the top of my head. Or am I way off base and it’s something else? © VivaciousPenguin / Reddit

• I’m a single dad, four years in. Two kids, 9 and 12. Our kitchen always felt like a room we passed through. Nobody lingered. Nobody sat.
  Got a kitchen island installed last fall. Texted the kids at school when it was done: island’s in. That afternoon they both came home, dropped their bags, and sat down without being asked. First time that had ever happened in this kitchen. Then the doorbell rang.
  Their mom. We hadn’t spoken in eight months. She was in town and wanted to see the kids for an hour. I said come in. She walked into the kitchen and stopped.
  My son was doing homework at one end of the island. My daughter was eating at the other. I was standing in the middle making dinner. She looked at the three of us for a moment and said, “I just needed to see they were okay.”
  She stayed for an hour. Sat at the island with the kids. I kept cooking. After she left my daughter said, “The island is good, Dad.” I said yeah. She said, “Mom thought so too. I could tell.”
  I don’t know what she saw standing in that doorway. But I think it helped. Took me four years and one kitchen island to look like I had things together. Apparently that’s what it took.

• Looks way more finished/designer. Love it! © CouchGremlin14 / Reddit

• We put in a kitchen island the week before my in-laws’ first visit. Full kitchen renovation — new countertops, cabinet painting, backsplash, the whole thing.
  My mother-in-law has opinions about kitchen design. Everyone in the family knows this. I was prepared. She walked in, went silent, circled the island once, ran her hand along the countertop.
  Then she sat down and said to my husband, “This is the kitchen I always wanted to give you.” He grew up in a small apartment. No space for anything like this. She’d apparently been carrying that for thirty years.
  She sat at that island for the rest of the evening like she’d always been there. Didn’t say another word about the interior design, the kitchen cabinets, any of it. I caught my husband’s eye across the island. We both just left it alone.
  Some home renovations do more than improve a kitchen. Some close something that’s been open for thirty years.

Wanted to share a recent kitchen project I’ve been working on that turned out better than expected. Cristallo Quartzite for the countertops, backsplash, and island — and the entire thing is lit from behind with LED backlighting panels
This stone has these cloudy, glassy patches that let the light through in a really subtle way — nothing harsh or flashy, just a smooth glow that shifts depending on the time of day. The light runs behind every surface and it honestly changes the feel of the whole space, especially in the evening.

• Our kitchen island nearly destroyed us and I need to talk about it. Full home renovation — new kitchen cabinets, countertops, backsplash, complete interior design overhaul. We agreed on everything except the island.
  My husband wanted a pure prep space. I wanted somewhere to sit and talk to him while he cooked. We did not know these were incompatible kitchen design philosophies until we were $4,000 in.
  The compromise: high end for prep, lower end with stools for me. Our contractor looked at the plans like we’d personally offended him. The cabinet painting alone caused three separate arguments.
  Here’s the thing though. Every evening now he’s on his end doing prep and I’m on my stool and we just talk. For like an hour. Haven’t done that consistently in years.
  Our couples therapist — yes, we saw one, the kitchen island came up in session three, not elaborating — asked how things were at home lately. We said really good actually. She nodded like she already knew. I think she knew.

I moved into this house recently and have been slowly changing things to be more my style. This kitchen island that came with the house is pretty banged up and has old burn marks on it, so I want to spruce it up and also make it look better with the rest of the kitchen decor I have going on right now.
I’m sort of at a loss for ideas though. I really want it to look darker since I have a lot of other wood tones in the kitchen and I don’t like the white cabinet look as much as I like cabin style/woodsy decor. I also think I want to paint the walls at some point to be a darker color but I’m not sure yet.
Can anyone think of ways to DIY the island that would look good with the rest of the kitchen?

• You can always sand it and stain it. It would be a pain in the butt, but doable. However.... since you just moved in I’d give it some time and see if you warm to it. Mismatched and banged up seems very cottagecore to me. I think it looks nice as is. © Reddit
• I would say wait to do anything with the island until you have repainted and redone the backsplash. You might find that the island goes great with whatever other colors you choose. If you refinish it now you run the risk of having to do it again if you don’t like how it looks with the new colors. © foolish_username / Reddit

A kitchen island, new countertops, fresh cabinet painting, the right backsplash. On paper, it’s just a home renovation. In practice, it’s where the homework gets done, where the hard conversations happen, where the teenager comes back downstairs. These families fixed their kitchen design and found out their kitchen had been the whole point all along.

Read next: 13 Homeowners Who Picked Up a Sledgehammer and Fixed Their Kitchen Design