How to Repurpose a Dresser into A Kitchen Island

This dream of hav­ing a kitchen island start­ed with a dress­er we found at a local resale shop. It was a bit taller than your stan­dard dress­er and made the per­fect height for an island, and thus, the dress­er to island con­ver­sion project was born.

If you’re look­ing to start a upcyled project that will look amaz­ing in your home, this would be an amaz­ing place to start. It’t the per­fect blend of rus­tic and beau­ti­ful. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.

Where to Start

If you’re look­i­ung for the per­fect piece of fur­ni­ture to flip upcy­cled into a kitchen island here are a few things to consider.

• Height-you want to make sure your piece is com­fort­able enough for you to stand and por­tion­al to what­ev­er barstools you think you may like
• Length-make sure your piece is not only por­po­tion­al for your space but also makes sense for your fam­i­ly. We chose some­thing longer so we could seat at least 3 at a time.
• Mate­r­i­al-If using a dress­er with a veneer like mine, I high­ly rec­om­mend replac­ing the top with a hard­wood. You will likel be remov­ing it any­way to expand your sur­face area and make it take on more of an island feel.
• Func­tion-I chose a dress­er with plen­ty of draw­ers for added kitchen storage

This is what the dress­er looked like orginal­ly. In all it’s orangey-veneered glo­ry. There she was, just beg­ging for a facelift. But she met all of my check­marks above and I knew she would be a per­fect fit for the space.

Demolition (sorta)

Next came the demo. I use the words “demo” loose­ly. There was a cou­ple weeks between the time we brought her home and actu­al­ly got to work. I took a pry bar to the top to loosen and knocked it out with a ham­mer. We also removed all the draw­ers and hard­ware, just to see what we were work­ing with.

The orig­i­nal plan was to just paint all the draw­ers, use the orginal hard­ware and put it back together.

Stabilize

It was only after I had it tak­en a part that I real­ized we could rework the struc­ture a bit to make it more sta­ble for our fam­i­ly. This was going to be a high traf­fic area for us so we knew replac­ing some of the ori­gianl pressed board with 1x4 would be smart in the ling run. 

We took out the top row all togeth­er and installed shiplap-type planks to the bot­tom and back. The shiplap served two pur­pos­es. As a pret­ty fin­ish but also as a way to cov­er up the brac­ing boards.

On a side note, the milk can strain­ers you see here are for out next kitchen project I was “mea­sur­ing” to see with we will need two or three. But thats a dif­fer­ent project for a dif­fer­ent day.

Are there oth­er ways to make an upcy­cled kitchen island? 

Paint

I want­ed to make this piece look as authen­ti­cal­ly aged as pos­si­ble. To do that I used three dif­fer­ent Gen­er­al Fin­ish­es Milk Paint and their stain block­ing primer to acheive a chip­py aged fin­ish.

Hardware

Anoth­er ele­ment to mak­ing this island look nice and aged was the hard­ware. Reg­u­lar, new and shiney hard­ware was­n’t gonna cut it. What ages a piece quick­er than rust, right? I know what you’re think­ing…Where do I get rusty hard­ware? I have a solu­tion for that too! 

LEARN HOW I RUSTED MY NEW HARDWARE HERE

A Special Touch (aka MORE rust)

Once com­plete, we need­ed to devise a way to sup­port the extra weight. Josh, in all of his cre­ative genius, reme­bered these old rusty farm imple­ments he pulled from a barn back in the Spring. I mean talk about hear­ing angel­ic voic­es sing. These lit­tle beau­ties worked like a dag­gum charm and made the per­fect addi­ton to this upcy­cled dress­er kitchen island.

My handy­men once again came to my res­cue, popped a cou­ple of holes in these bad boys and braced them up per­fect­ly. Okay, I made that sound way eas­i­er than it real­ly was. These old farm­house imple­ments were thick and did not give way to the elec­tric drill very eas­i­ly but it got the job done! 

Top it Off

With the paint and hard­ware nailed down, we set out on a whole sep­a­rate jour­ney of it’s own, in build­ing our DIY rus­tic island coun­ter­top.

BUT it was exact­ly what this piece need­ed, the final touch…that beau­ti­ful and care­ful­ly aged sol­id maple final­ly found her rest­ing place and oooooh my word she is a beaut! What do you think?

Now that I look at these bolt, I think I will be rust­ing the using the same tech­nique that I used for the hardware.…what do you think?

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