Goodbye Breakfast Bar

Ever since I published the State of the Kitchen, the breakfast bar has irked me more and more. It’s too close to the dining area and too shallow to make it useable. It creates a visual barrier to the kitchen.

Not to mention the fact that the facing wood of the bar clashes horribly with our beautiful hickory wood floors.

As I mentioned in the State of the Kitchen, though we won’t be doing a big renovation in the kitchen there were a few small changes I want to make. I didn’t mention dealing with the breakfast bar, because I’ve always been on the fence about it. Would it be worth it? Could I DIY the renovation and not have to rely on a contractor? What would do I for a countertop?

Mike and I have been throwing around the idea of replacing our countertops with new Formica – and a trip to Lowes reinforced the idea that it was a completely DIYable project (thanks to a great man named Ivo in the kitchen department). Not only that, it should be relatively affordable. What if, we wondered, we lopped off the breakfast bar and created more of an “island” feel for that counterspace?

Well, there’s only one way to find out:

Sledge it! We began the demo by hitting the underside with an 8 pound sledgehammer. A few good whacks and away it came.

The brackets were glued and nailed from the opposite side, so those needed to be sledged off, too. It turns out that the “solid” piece of wood on the breakfast bar was just wood laminate over particleboard. Not much of a loss.

I measured the distance from the top of the wood to the countertop, then ran a line of Frog Tape to mark where to saw.

Using a jig saw, we cut across the top of the tape line.

A little hand-sawing near the wall and the breakfast bar was officially no more.

The change it made was instantaneous. All of a sudden the flow from the dining area to the kitchen made sense. The counter space, though unchanged, seems bigger. This arm of the kitchen was transformed into a rudimentary island.

This is just the beginning of what may be a long road to our small DIY kitchen reno. We plan to extend the island toward the dining room, replace the countertops, replace the sink, redo the floor, and add a backsplash.

I’m trying not to think too much about what lies ahead. For the moment I’m just basking in the thrill of a little sledgehammering, a little sawing, and what instantly feels like a new kitchen with possibilities.

Disclaimer: As a member of the FrogTape Blog Squad, I want to thank FrogTape for sponsoring this post. All opinions, projects and ideas expressed herein are my own.

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