Painted Detail on My Kitchen Island

Last weekend was perfect. Mother's Day was lovely - Michael and the girls surprised me with a necklace I've been eying for a while and a gorgeous bunch of peonies.

The arrangement was so pretty that I thought it was a good excuse to break out the camera and take some 'after shots' of my kitchen island that I've been meaning to share with you.

This old dresser was one of the very first things Michael and I bought as a married couple. We got it for almost nothing at a thrift store in Arizona. It's been about 20 different colors over the years and the hardware's changed a half dozen times. The top hutch piece was some I picked up a few years later at the Crate and Barrel outlet.

When we moved into our new apartment, I knew I wanted to add an island to our kitchen to provide more counter space and to separate the cooking/prep area from the dining, but I didn't think I wanted to use this dresser. I mean, look at the back of the thing. It was in bad shape. This is right after we moved in last September.

Call me sentimental (or cheap), but I thought I'd at least give the dresser a run as a possible island, so I pulled off the old back.

I got a piece of very inexpensive chipboard cut to size at Home Depot, and stapled and nailed it in place. Then I primed and painted the whole thing in BEHR's Night Shade (it looks navy in the picture, but it actually has a lot of green in it).

The new paint helped the situation a lot. I knew I wanted to add moulding or something though to make the flat back more exciting. It's one of the first things you see from our front door, so it was important for the detail to be sort of punchy and fun. I liked this paint treatment from House and Home and thought it would be a cinch to do something similar:

After doing a little sketch and planning out my measurements, I taped off all the straight lines.

Then I put down a base coat of the same Night Shade paint to seal the tape and prevent most of the paint bleeding.

Then on went the white paint for the detail.

I like to pull my tape off immediately, while the paint's still wet. You can see the lines still bled a little, but it was an easy fix with a detail brush.

To make curves in the corners, I just used a round glass as a template and then filled in the lines with the detail brush.

At first I was worried that the white and navy felt too nautical, but I love the relief the white paint provides against all the navy and black in the kitchen, and it also ties in the floors and the marble on the island.

I'm also really happy with how the navy works with the black cabinets. I love mixing black and blues.

And pink just looks good with anything.