#How To Build a Kitchen Island On a Budget - Eurofit Direct

Kitchen islands are immensely popular right now and they’re almost a must have for large kitchens in order to utilise all that spare floor space, but kitchen islands can be a bit on the costly side, you could be looking at paying hundreds of pounds for even a basic kitchen island. So today we decided to put together a clever little guide to building your own kitchen island for next to nothing.

Difficulty: Easy

Duration: 1-2 Hours plus drying time

Tools for the job: 4 L-shaped brackets, 8-16 wood screws, cordless drill, paint

This project is a really simple but fantastically inventive, to create your very own kitchen island all you need are shelf units, and a slab of countertop.

Start by acquiring your shelf units, they’ll need to be wider than they are tall and roughly the same height or slightly taller than the rest of your kitchen countertops. The deeper and sturdier they are the better, hardwood is ideal but other materials are still perfectly suitable for this project. Here’s an example of the kind of product that we mean:

You can pick these things up for next to nothing, around £20 will get you a solid shelf unit of the correct size, you’ll need two for this project so make sure that they’re identical, you can even paint them so that they match the woodwork or materials in your existing kitchen, though its best to do this while the shelving units are still independent of the finished product, it’s much easier than faffing around later on.

Once you’ve found your shelf units, place them together back to back and measure out the dimensions of the combined top, this will give you the minimum size of the countertop that you’ll need. Your counter-top should be slightly longer and wider than the overall dimensions of the shelf tops in order to give your finished kitchen island a lip, this will make it much easier to attach the countertop. When it comes to choosing a countertop, wood is a much easier material to work with and we recommend it for this project, you can even match it with your existing countertops if they’re also made from wood. You can use granite, however you’ll need to consult your local hardware store or a skilled tradesman as granite can be much harder to fit. Once you’ve decided on a wooden countertop of your choice, you can even make one from MDF if you so choose, you’ll need to attach it to the shelves.

Lay the countertop across the top of the two back to back shelf units and ensure that it is lined up correctly, if the countertop hangs unevenly it will ruin the look of the finished project so this step is vital. Once you’re happy with the positioning of the countertop, using wood screws that are shorter than the thickness of the wood, attach the L brackets to the sides of the shelf units so that the corner of the l bracket fits into the corner created by the lip of the countertop. Again using wood screws that are shorter than the wood is thick, attach the bracket to the bottom of the countertop lip, you’ll need to do this four times, twice on each side of the shelf units. Once this is done test how secure the countertop is, if there’s any wobble you may need to attach extra brackets to the front of the shelf units where there’s a suitable amount of wood, repeat as necessary until the countertop is fully secured.

Now that your DIY kitchen island is fully assembled you can now add the finishing touches, an extra lick of paint to spice up the countertop or base if you didn’t paint it earlier is a great idea, you can also laminate or tile the countertop if you want to use it for food preparation. Another interesting idea is to attach cupboard doors to the shelf units if you want to hide some things away, alternatively you can take out the centre shelves to create a little footwell and place stools or chairs around the island. You can also attach hooks to the underside of the countertop lip that you can hang kitchen towels or a braid of garlic, anything really. There you have it, you very own Kitchen Island for far less than market price.