Wow! Your island looks terrific! And what a great deal! Great job!

Now that is fantastic! Isn't it amazingly satisfying when you pull something off like this for such a low dollar amount? To have created this island at any price is fabulous, but that you did it for a song is incredible! Great job!!!!

Oooh I love your island! Love the dark and white together, love the wood top, great view, great job!

Lovely place to sit and have breakfast while on
your vacation. Wonderful deal on the cabs too.

Thanks for the kind comments! It's a very open room with windows on both walls. To the side of the island outside the windows are very mature camellias - looking out the front & thru the living room is the lake. We got so many great ideas in our original post that I'll try to link it below.

Here is a link that might be useful: original post in December '08

That is GORGEOUS! One of the best islands I've seen. I usually prefer a plain, hefty edge on an island top, but I'm loving this unique one. It dresses it up without stealing the heft.

It looks like there might be a seam and a different finish on the end toward the window, but I can't tell. Does the railroad car flooring go all the way across or is there a change in the counter?

All the changes you've made have vastly improved the space. Very elegant now!

Hi rhome410 - The island top is in 3 pieces: two side pieces with a connector in the middle where the grain runs across. They are all finished the same but catch the light a little differently in the photos. It's not something you notice in person.

We did this for a couple of reasons: #1 is that the piece would have been too heavy for the 2 of us to carry and install & #2 the pieces were fairly short & to get a "solid" surface would have taken lots of jointing. The center piece is lap jointed & the pieces are attached via pocket screws on the bottom.

The weight was the main issue & this was the best solution we could come up with. No way we could have moved it.

The piecing isn't a bad thing and I completely understand. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something! ;-)

STttuuunnninnggg!

Wow, hats off to the DIYers. It looks like an heirloom piece. What a nice design. The wooden top is out of the world...

great job.

Why do I only see one seam when there are 10 pieces in the top? (first post). Then later, you say there are 3? In any case, did you caulk the seams or do something else to make the transition so "seamless"? How hard is it to router an edge like that? It looks fantastic!! Can I also ask what stain and finish you used on it.

That island top is to-die-for! Way, way cool! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE your cocktail table, too! Details, please......

Wow... I am so impressed! It looks fabulous and I LOVE LOVE LOVE that you achieved that using recycled and traded-for materials and your own ingenuity and sweat equity. Really wonderful. It looks like a fabulous space!!!

Beautiful!! Great job....also love the windows and the mirror over the sink.

Enjoy your lake house!

Thanks everybody for your nice comments - makes the work seem worthwhile!

Scrappy 25 - Sorry for the confusion. There are 10 pieces of RR flooring scrap in the top. It is built in 3 sections: 2 end sections of four pieces each & 1 center section of two pieces that run across the grain. The 3 pieces are lap jointed & attached underneath using pocket screws and those are the 2 seams that are visible in the middle of the top. The 2 larger sections don't show any seams because they have been sanded, jointed, sanded, jointed.... then glued together & more sanding to achieve more of a finished furniture look. Hope this diagram helps to understand what I meant. The edge was not too hard. We got a long router bit (on clearance at Woodcrafters - $15) and DH had to kind of freehand it around the edge. Then he did a 3/8" radius on the bottom edge to knock off the sharp corner. There are a couple of "wavy bits" but not too bad. To quote DH "hey, I'm not a machine" - haha!

{{!gwi}}

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The finish: first we used Behlen water based grain filler, then General Finishes brand water based stain - 4 parts Espresso & 1 part Brown Mahogany. Then 4 or 5 coats of poly. We experimented with several stains & finish coats. Loved a brown wax over the poly but it failed the water mark test. DH absolutely hated the water based filler & stain. It raised the grain too much and required too much re-sanding. Live & learn! It probably took a month of weekends + evenings for the finished product.

{{!gwi}}

Here's a picture of our test piece. This is the size of each piece - about 1' x 4'.

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cat-mom: Do you mean the table with the funky legs in the living room or the tree table in the corner of the island shot? DH made those too! In the living room, the top is the stone sink cut out from my brother's kitchen reno. The bottom is just pieces & parts - mostly farming scrap metal. The tree table is just a slab of tree from our yard & crape myrtle legs. Sorry I don't have another picture of that here.

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Gorgeous island. Great job hunting down just the right materials within your budget. All those stories plus the "wavy bits" add character to the house.

thank you for all those details! You are craftsman par excellence. I love the wavy router story. You should be really proud of such a beautiful island.

What a wonderful job- all of your hard work certainly paid off. Where on earth do you find unused railroad car flooring scraps? My uncle worked for the Santa Fe RR in NM and we spent half our summers playing all over the box car he had out in his field.

mcmann -

We searched craigslist, antique stores, junk stores - everywhere for an affordable wooden surface & found nothing for months. Our town has a small AM radio station (old timey, classic country - it's cool!!) and every morning they do an on-air flea market for buying, selling, trading. One morning we heard a guy on there selling the scraps. Lucky find, indeed!!

OT - if interested in hearing small town Texas radio there's a link below with an audio link at the top of the page! Flea Market is 8-9:55am every day but Sunday.

Here is a link that might be useful: trade day radio show

Okay, when I hear "budget" and "lakehouse" I think of dark, dusty, and out of the box. What you've done is gorgeous, and the parts that are out of the box are beautifully disguised with the custom work you've done around them. I love the windows. And the router bit. :-) (And everything else...)