Piecemeal kitchen island

Materials: Bekvam kitchen cart (or similar item), Lagan countertop, Vika Byske Table Leg, drawer slider, wooden slats, cutlery tray

Description: I've had an IKEA kitchen island since sophomore year of college when I moved into a dorm room with a kitchen. It's been the perfect fix for the common lack of counter space in every apartment I've lived in since then. In June, I moved into a tiny studio apartment (200 square feet total) in Brooklyn. The 'kitchen' was just a refrigerator, a stove, a sink, and two cabinets in a nook to one side of the apartment. I knew I need more counter space, as well as a space to eat and work, so I built this multi-purpose kitchen island/bar table/workspace using my old IKEA island and some other IKEA products. Unfortunately, some of the IKEA products I used have disappeared from the site, but I'm sure there are other similar items you could use.

First, we mounted the Lagan countertop at 39", slightly lower than standard bar height but still high enough for 29" stools to fit comfortably under. We secured one end of the counter to the wall using L-brackets, then attached the Vika Byske leg to the other end.

Because the kitchen didn't have a single drawer (something I noticed after I had already moved in, of course), I fashioned a utensil drawer out of a cutlery tray that was almost exactly the same size as the surface of the bottom island. Using a 3/4 extension 18" bottom mount drawer slide from McMaster-Carr, we attached the utensil tray to the top of the smaller kitchen island. Because the bottom mount drawer slide was mounted in the center of drawer, it was slightly wobbly, so we used some wooden slats and screwed them in on one side of the bottom island to steady the drawer. It works great!

~ Molly, Brooklyn, NY