Praise God for a Lowe’s cabinet sale and a military discount. We were able to buy stock cabinets for the price of a couple cheese burgers.
We have some friends that lived in a boat in Seattle. Their advice was that everything should serve two purposes.
The island is the centerpiece of the home. We didn’t want to have a kitchen and a dining table. That would take up too much space. So we designed a 12.5 foot long island that would be most of our cabinet storage, hold the microwave and be our dining table. It needed to seat at least 8 people because… just because.
Stock cabinets are cheap plywood and have no backing. I wanted to frame them in with a little stud wall and then wrap them in shiplap to give it a nice finished look that would match the walls of the kitchen.
After building the short stud wall, I rented a Hitli gun from Home Depot and shot the footers into the concrete. I think I need a Hilti just to have. Those dudes are a lot of fun!
I attached the cabinets to the shirt stud wall, then furred out the ends of the cabinets with oak strips to cover the 2x4s.
We wanted to microwave built it because I didn’t want to see it on the countertop. The kitchen is the main part of the house, so I didn’t want to look at anything like that. I was able to build some shelves between two of the cabinets with some oak to match the face of the Lowe’s cabinets.
