Kitchen Cabinet & Center Island Table Ideas

Kitchen cabinets provide a place for everything and prevent your kitchen from becoming a chaotic mess of dishes, food and appliances. Kitchen islands can help to accomplish this by providing even more accessible cabinet and counter space for your culinary projects. Unlike a conventional kitchen counter, a kitchen island can be accessed from all four sides, providing more flexibility for storage and work spaces. Does this Spark an idea?

Matching Designs

If a center island is being added to an already existing kitchen, it should be built in a style and with materials that match the kitchen. By creating an island that has the same color and style as the other cabinets in the kitchen, you will create a sense of cohesiveness in the room, and make it appear that the island had always been there. If cabinets are old or worn, consider painting or staining them at the same time as the new island, thus creating a perfect match.

Concrete Countertop

Concrete is a countertop option that is becoming more popular. It has the benefits of granite or marble (impermeability, resistance to heat, durability), but can be done at a fraction of the price of stone products. As with cabinets, a concrete counter will look best on a kitchen island if it is matched with the other counters in the kitchen. If you have inferior or battered counters in your kitchen, you can replace them with concrete at the same time that you install your kitchen island.

Island Plumbing and Electric

Some kitchen islands are equipped with plumbing and electrical outlets. Depending on the layout of your kitchen, this can be very advantageous for efficiency in cooking and serving. Having electrical outlets integrated into your kitchen island gives you the option of using appliances on the island without draping cords across the walkway. Plumbing in the island, either the main kitchen sink or a small auxiliary sink, can give you easy access to water while working at the stove. If you live in an older house in a very cold climate and have had problems with freezing pipes, replacing your outside wall plumbing with plumbing that runs into the island can permanently solve this problem.

Counter Heights

As a rule, the height of the counter on top of the kitchen island should be the same as the other counters in the kitchen. The exception to this is if you want a place to sit while working in the kitchen, in which case you could install a lower, table-height section into the island.