I’m qui­et­ly chuck­ling as I start to write this post. When I first start­ed putting togeth­er in my head what I want­ed to actu­al­ly “do” on my blog, this kitchen island I’m going to tell you about played a big part.

You see, I looked for months to final­ly find this fab­u­lous piece of fur­ni­ture and after I did and it turned out to be even BETTER than I antic­i­pat­ed, I knew I had to make it eas­i­er for the next per­son to find one.

This par­tic­u­lar style isn’t going to appeal to every­one, but the func­tion­al­i­ty and sim­plic­i­ty can be used as a guide­line while doing your search or if you are design­ing one to be built. It just so hap­pens this sol­id maple beau­ty looks fab­u­lous in our kitchen.

My hunt­ing jour­ney start­ed on the inter­net and I also had two dif­fer­ent kitchen cab­i­net com­pa­nies give me esti­mates to either build or “retro fit” a stock cab­i­net to the size I want­ed. The esti­mates were both over $1500, WITHOUT a top…meaning that price would be added on depend­ing on what sur­face I chose…granite, butch­er block, etc.

After the esti­mates came in, I decid­ed I would just get back on the com­put­er and start searching.…again. Well some­how I must have put in the right “key word”…I have no idea…but up pops this huge site called Kitchen­source. I could tell right away I could be in the right place.

After more surf­ing around on the site, I hit the jack­pot and found my new best friend…my Ulti­mate Kitchen Island. 

All of the tech­ni­cal details are on the site, so what I want to share is how incred­i­bly well made this island is. It IS a piece of fur­ni­ture. Yes, you have to assem­ble it, but the instruc­tions are very clear, all the pieces are num­bered, as well as all of the hard­ware pieces. It is best if you have a pow­er dri­ven screw­driv­er as even though the holes are pre-drilled, it is sol­id hard wood! I put it togeth­er by myself and did it in two steps.

First, I unpacked everything…which inci­den­tal­ly it came in three sep­a­rate box­es, each one shrink wrapped in plas­tic. The UPS man said it’s the only com­pa­ny he has ever seen do that…so no mois­ture issue at all! I laid every­thing out in our liv­ing room orga­niz­ing the num­bered pieces togeth­er and read through the instructions.

The next morn­ing, I went to work. It took time, as you will see, there are doors, a draw­er, two pull out cut­ting boards and every­thing must go togeth­er in order. It took me the bet­ter part of the day to fin­ish it, but I did­n’t rush and the fin­ished project was SO worth it! I can’t say enough great things about the Catskill Crafts­man qual­i­ty. And there are MANY oth­er sizes and styles to choose from.

I went one step fur­ther with the inte­ri­or and added pull out baskets…absolutely MAKES the island a dream work cen­ter. I shot a quick video show­ing the inte­ri­or with my additions.

I high­ly encour­age you to share this infor­ma­tion. If it saves just one per­son from months of hunt­ing to find­ing what they are look­ing for, it will be worth it.

I feel great…this post has been brew­ing inside for awhile! Do you have an ULTIMATE tool or solu­tion that you can’t live with­out? I’d love to hear about it!

https://​youtu​.be/​u​l​x​Q​V​_​R​E​Jy8