Sunday, March 27, 2011

island time

My awesome, lovely, beautiful mother decided to spoil me by buying me an early birthday present- a kitchen island!

When we moved our new table into its appointed spot, we temporarily left the old one in the middle of our kitchen. This made us realize how awesome it would be to have a little mobile work-station there (and that we really did have space for something in that spot)

I was deciding between:
Flytta


Stenstorp


and Groland.


Ultimately, We really love butcher block, and since we have white cabinets and wanted something that could roll, we decided on the stenstorp kitchen cart. Here it is in action:



excuse the lighting... it's overcast and misty here.


Doak got me/ us a cutting board that happens to fit perfectly over the top of the new cart:

I am very tempted to go buy a few more to cover up the ugly faux-carrera marble laminate countertops in our house.

From what I've read about butcher block, the most important thing to do to take care of it is to condition it with food-grade oil every day for a week, then every week for a month or two, then every month forever. After some quick research, I discovered that the expensive "butcher block conditioning oils" sold in hardware stores are pretty much just pure mineral oil, give or take a small percentage of linseed or orange oils. Know where else they sell mineral oil? in the drugstore, at about $2 per quart, in the laxative aisle. It's supposed to make the wood gorgeous and water-tight.

So if you're ever at our house and you see a big bottle that says "laxative" on it in the kitchen, don't think I'm super weird. it's for the counter-tops.

3 comments:

Shannon said...

Looks great! I loved this picture and the one you sent me. I'm looking forward to seeing your house when we come visit. I can't even place things you've changed so much!

Karen said...

It looks great in your kitchen! I am glad you are enjoying it. You have done an amazing job of decorating your house--I love it! Love you!!

Eric said...

This island looks great in your kitchen. Would you mind terribly telling me the height clearance for the lower shelves? I.e. the distance from the shelf to the surface above? I'm wondering if my toaster oven would fit on one of these carts...