Peninsula: Kitchen Side

There are drawers on the right, 30" wide. Left of that is a 15" wide cabinet with drawers which contains a pull-out trash. To the left of the trash cabinet, hidden in the corner to the side of the dishwasher,  is a 24" cabinet which is turned toward the bar side. I didn't want any blind corner cabinets.

Below is a picture of the inside of the ikea drawers. Ikea sells nice drawer dividers so that stuff doesn't slide around a lot when opening and closing drawers. The drawers are pretty deep. You can see that I have a pitcher in the bottom drawer.

Peninsula: Bar Side

Here is the raised bar side of the peninsula. The raised bar is close to standard bar height of 42". All of the parts that are painted grey are made of plywood. I used the Ace brand of high gloss paint, painted to match my roll-out set of drawers, which you can barely see the top of in the back corner of the kitchen.

The little shelving area serves as a support for the bar overhang (which is a 12" overhang). The shelving is stained the same color as the cubby hole next to the butcher block. I wanted these shelves so I could have somewhere to store my cookbooks. Also on the wall end is a cabinet. It is a standard IKEA cabinet which is turned to face the dining room.  The door is custom made to look the same style as the IKEA doors. The cabinet has extra depth because of the depth of the knee wall. Below is a picture of the inside of that cabinet. The area around the knee wall was framed in and stained to match the inside of the IKEA cabinet.

Pull-out Trash

IKEA didn't make a pull-out trash system that was big enough for me. This particular one includes two 35qt trash cans, so I can have one for trash and one for recycling. The system was attached to the standard IKEA door. I believe the one I purchased is the Knape and Vogt brand. Rev-A-Shelf also makes pull out systems as well.

One thing that really bothers my husband about the configuration is that the dishwasher is in the same corner as the trash. Often you find that you want to access the trash while the dishwasher is open.

In my initial design, I had the trash to the left of the sink, but I wanted the cabinet in that spot to be on casters so I could slide it out from under the counter in order to access the back corner. I have another post about that. I could have had the trash in a moving cabinet, but I was afraid that the cabinet would try to move if there was heavy stuff in the trashcan, even though I had locking casters. Now, I don't think that would have been a problem, because the I never even lock the casters on the cabinet that is there now, and it doesn't want to move when opening drawers. Also, I thought that the cabinet to the left of the sink would be visually more appealing to be drawers, vs a cabinet door, because it is also a different color and and a different height than the other cabinets.

The other spot the trash could have gone to is the end of the peninsula (trade it with the set of drawers). This would have put it far from the sink, but I think in hindsight it may have been the best option. It is nice having the trash beneath the butcher block, because a lot of food trash is generated there.

My Refrigerator "Spice Rack"

I originally wanted a spice rack to hang on the wall, to save space. Then I thought to stick my spices to the refrigerator using magnets. I bought the magnets online from Applied Magnets. They were pretty cheap, so I bought a bunch of them. I used small neodymium disc magnets (rare earth magnets). I used two or three for each spice container. I just use tape to attach the magnets to the container. When the spice runs out, I take the magnets off and tape them to the new container.

Ideally, spices shouldn't be exposed to sunlight. The side of my fridge only gets some indirect light, so I think it is probably ok.

The Porcelain Tile Countertop Edge

The edge of the porcelain tile is a basic butt joint. We discovered that cutting theses 24" tiles was very tricky, so we didn't attempt anything fancy. The tile is through bodied, so the color runs all the way through the tile. You can see though, that the pattern is a little different on the cut edge of the tile,and also more matte. We tried to polish that edge to make it as shiny as the face of the tile, but the polisher had little effect. A rotary sander was used with a polishing pad purchased from the tile store. A coarse grit polishing pad was used to very slightly round the edges so they wouldn't be sharp.

I considered a Schluter edging but decided against it partly because of the expense, and partly because it is permanently embedded into the tile. I was afraid that the metal edging could become damaged and there would be no way to replace it short of ripping out tiles.