This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience (which means if you make a purchase after clicking a link I will earn a small commission which helps keep my blog up and running but it won't cost you a penny more)! As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

In this post, we are back at the rental cottage that I bought, and my daughter has moved into. We are still working on projects in the kitchen.

If you have missed anything so far, check out these posts to catch up:

Kitchen Updates at the Cottage

DIY Rolling Spice Rack from Curbside Finds

Here is the initial tour right after I bought the house - New Rental House Tour

Today I'm sharing the kitchen island we made.

DIY Kitchen Island from a Yard Sale Cupboard

We like to go to yard sales in the summer and we found this old cupboard or cabinet at a sale at the high school.

We stopped at this sale specifically looking for bookcases. It was mostly school desks and tables, nothing really cool. But we spotted a couple of old pieces of furniture off to the side and when we walked over to look at them, we thought one would be good to make into a kitchen island. They actually had tops to them too... like a hutch top but they were gigantic and basically ruined so we left that behind but bought one of the bottoms for $10.

We do have all four drawers; we had just taken two out so we could see how the top was attached so we could remove it.

We started to take it apart and found something cool hidden inside. If you missed that, check it out HERE, it's only 1.37 minutes long.

I also made a video of the whole transformation of this old cupboard into my daughter's new kitchen island, you can check it out below:

Our first task once we got the top off... was to kill an angry hornet's nest 😬 ha-ha! Once we got that taken care of, we needed to cut the whole thing in half because it was far too big as it was for the cottage kitchen.

My dad and I cut it right down the middle with my Sawzall.

I added a bottom since it didn't have one and we were planning to add wheels. It turned out that it was too tall with wheels so in the end, we took them off.

Then we added the back onto the cabinet.

We reused the original tongue and groove boards that were on the back (shown below). I cut them down so that the backs of the drawers would remain exposed.

If you have come this far, and you still don't know what the surprise that we found that I keep talking about is or why we have chosen to leave the backs of the drawers exposed, it's because we found signatures of the kids who built this cabinet on the backs of the drawers. It's marked "Prosser High School, Class of 1925!" 😲

At this point, we took it inside to finish it up.

We painted the back, and the front around the drawers and doors green. We used Howard's Feed 'n Wax on the sides, and the drawers and door fronts.

We didn't do much to the doors and drawers besides scrape and sand them, and we didn't even remove the old hardware, we left it as found because we really liked the rustic look.

On the left end, we added a couple of hooks for towels and potholders. Here you can see part of that first signature that we found too.

On the right side of the island, we added a new paper towel holder and a metal basket that I found at Goodwill.

The top was the only thing we bought for this DIY kitchen island (aside from the hooks, paper towel holder, and basket). We had originally planned to reuse the old top, but it was too badly warped and started to split and fall apart after we cut out the part with the signature.

We purchased a butcher block top from Lowe's, isn't it beautiful?!

Here's a close-up of the signatures on the backs of the drawers.

We have not yet done it, but I'm planning to spray these areas with a clear protective sealer. I'm afraid if I try to brush on the sealer, it will smear the signatures since they are done in pencil.

We are so happy with how this turned out! I'll be honest, I was a little worried that it wouldn't turn out as good as we hoped but since she liked the rustic look, it was much easier to pull off!

We are planning to use the other half in the garage for storage or a workbench. Some sad news: we found out that the other, identical cupboard that they had at the sale was thrown in the trash because no one wanted it. I was so shocked by this, I thought it was such a cool piece! We have no idea if there were signatures on that one as well.

Here are the sources for the things we used for this project:

I hope that you enjoyed this project. If you did, I'd love it if you would share it!

PIN ME!