Not an Island

Ghastly right? The damn pine panelling adorns every surface in the kitchen, including the hideous bench (pictured here with the saloon stools awaiting the howdys). But for the undeniable functional ease that an island bench brings, we would have knocked this bastard down for a start. Coming to terms with the necessity of bench space, we embarked on a quest to come up with an answer. How to have a bench, indeed a kitchen, that was at once functional and aesthetically okay. I guess this is a pretty common journey but one which, by the looks of the images on the internet, often ends in failure if not heartbreak. We had toyed with concrete benchtop, a company called Concrete Blonde do incredibly sexy patinations. We even considered some kind of faux stone which I could never quite deal with at a gut level. At one point we thought we had found the solution in a piece by Gitta Gschwendtner that really pushes the boundaries of outlandish functionality. "Why not make it a sculpture" came the not unfamiliar refrain from my beautiful wife.

We decided however that our space was not big enough to accomodate such a statement. The perennial question also raised its head, we have no money. We started looking at what we could do with the existing structure and cupboards and had a fun 24 hours brainstorming different solutions. We figured if we pulled out the beading and covered the bevelled panels, the existing structure could work. Pegboard was a front runner for a while, and we considered all things from collage to metal.
In the end, this assemblage/painting by Rosalie Gasgoigne provided the inspiration.

Several sheets of ply later, and some nips and tucks with the circular saw, this is the result. As for the top, we kept thinking stainless steel. Despite the nay sayers, I have always hankered for this easy wipedown slick surface. Again, money remained an issue until a neighbour said, "go see Rob in Colac". We did and he whipped up this top in a few days at a price that was unbeleivable. Almost incredibly, the top slipped on like a glove having been expertly made from my crappy drawings.