Kitchen Island—Check!

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was working on a little project that was taking longer than I had anticipated.  Well, I’m finally done.  The result is what I wanted, but the energy output was incongruous to that result!

My kitchen island is about 9 years old.  When we moved into this house, it was too big for the kitchen, so I had Craig basically cut it in half to make it work.  It’s been through a lot and been well-used.  The light colored wood top was stained and dull and never my favorite color anyway.  I figured I’d just sand it down, stain it, and be done.

 

 

I sanded, I stained, I waited 15 minutes, I wiped off the excess as instructed, and got this:

 

 

Not what I envisioned.  Apparently it needed more sanding.  I had already put all my strength into it, so Craig had a go.  He spent almost two hours on it and broke a sweat.  I stained it again, and while the result was better, there were still big areas that didn’t absorb the color.  So we sanded some more!

That must have been some kind of heavy-duty original finish!  After all that sanding, the third stain application took, and then I did a fourth, and finally 2 coats of polyurethane.  As you can see, there are still some areas that did not take the stain.

 

So it has kind of a rustic, uneven finish, but I like it.

 

This was one of the projects on my Home Goals post from back in January.  I thought this was the first thing I had accomplished from the list, but when I looked back at it to get the link, I realized we’ve actually finished several things.

• make master bedroom headboard out of old door
• do board and batten, or possibly some other type of trim treatment, in living room
• stain kitchen island top a darker color
• save enough $ for new living room furniture  (I’m getting close!)
• give two lamps a makeover
• organize kitchen cabinets
• organize mudroom and make cushion for the bench
• paint Pinkerbelle's room
• paint corner cupboard
• paint master bathroom
• paint hall bathroom
• paint boys' rooms

That makes me happy, and gives me hope that maybe I will get the list done!