If our kitchen story had chapters, I think we’d be on chapter 24. Seriously, lots to piece together when it comes to an entire kitchen! I’ve shown you little snip-its of our island before, but today it gets its day in the sun.

As you know, our kitchen is one giant room, and it also houses our farmhouse dining table. It will also be home to a small sitting area as well as our entry bench and shelf. Therefore, we wanted an extra large island to marry all of these spaces together. It needed to be big. It needed to make a statement. And it needed to have character. So, I sketched out a design, and we worked closely with our amazing woodworker to make this piece come to life. I wanted the island to look like a piece of furniture, rather than just a predictable and massive rectangular cabinet.

As you can see, one side houses our microwave, our trash (large middle drawer), and the other drawers are where our pots and pans and other kitchen gadgets live. The other side has cabinets for all glassware/dishware that are seldomly used. We wanted this island to not only look good, but work hard too.

As for the top of our island, it’s custom built by our woodworker. It’s made out of maple wood and stained with a dark walnut stain. We chose butcher block because it brings warmth to the space, and we want this room to feel cozy, not cold.

How big is the island, you ask? It measures 69 inches x 51 inches. To give this big piece some character, we added planks to each side of the island, and “columns” that define the area where our bar stools will soon sit.

And as for the actual color of the island (since it was crazy sunny in our kitchen and every photo I took seems to show a different shade of blue/gray/green) its No. 26 down pipe from Farrow & Ball.

We adore the color (it actually looks more like this in person than what the “real life” photos portray) and would recommend it in a heartbeat! Last detail – the pulls are the duluth pulls from Restoration Hardware in oil-rubbed bronze.

You are probably thinking that I am holding out on you and not posting any large scale photos of the entire room. And  sadly, that’s true. I’m hesitant to show you anything half done, because you will be underwhelmed. I’ll roll bits and pieces out and when all is ready, I’ll take photos of the entire room and kitchen:).