kitchen island refresh with Porta Timber

You don’t have to completely renovate your kitchen to make an impact. In a few simple steps, you can really elevate your space! Click above to see how DIY customer, Tom, transformed his space in one weekend and read on as we note down all the helpful tips and tricks for this project.

before kitchen

Before updating the island bench, Tom’s kitchen worked well, but it was a little bland and lacking life. Tom decided to use Tasmania Oak Cirque profile contours from Porta Timber to clad the front and side of the island and then updated his benchtop, to match the back of his kaboodle kitchen. For this, he used our kaboodle molasses benchtop.

Tom headed into his local Bunnings and visited the Special Orders desk to purchase a molasses benchtop and Porta Timber contours. Once these arrived, it was time to get stuck into the project!

Bunnings shopping list

• Porta Timber contours

• Timber stain

• Monarch Mini Construction Adhesive

• Sand paper

• Nails 

He started by doing a dry fit, the first step involved a bit of cutting to shape the first board to fit around the skirting board at the bottom. Once that board fit into place, he slid the remaining boards into position until they sat past the corner.

“Along the side I started by cutting one board lengthways to remove the tongue so that the front edge would be the thickest part of the profile. I secured that front board and then positioned the following boards until I met the other boards at the corner,” Tom says.

Luckily the boards lined up quite well at the corner so he didn’t need to do anything too complicated to create the join. On the back he cut one of the boards down the middle to sit flush with the corner, and on the side he then cut part of the tongue off to create a thin overhang.  

“I did all of this once I removed the old benchtop. Having the benchtop off actually allowed me to work around the island without banging my head all the time which is important, but it also allowed me to position the boards against the island so that I could run a pencil line around the top to mark out the cut heights perfectly,” says Tom.

Once Tom had marked all of the contours needed, he numbered all the boards to make sure he put them back in the right order when it came time to install.

After cutting all the boards to length Tom gave them a light sand and then stained them.

“The boards come finished, but it is a good idea to give them a light sand just to remove any splinters and clean up any cuts that you may have made.”

“A trick to sanding the profiles is finding something you can use as a sanding block that is the right shape to fit the profile. I had a glue bottle that fit, so I was able wrap some sandpaper around it and run all over the boards pretty quickly,” says Tom.

After Tom sanded back the contours, he then stained them black, to tie in with his matt black molasses v kaboodle cabinetry. 

“The process for some stains can be a bit different, but I was using a pretty simple stain so it was just a rag application and a pretty quick dry time which is always good. Once the stain had dried, I used kaboodle clear hardwax oil which I have used on timber benchtops in the past, but it went on over the stain really well and provided a nice matte finish which we were looking for.”

When it came to installing the contours, Tom just ran a bead of construction adhesive down the middle of the board and then nailed them back into place starting from the wall and working towards the corner.

“Putting on the new benchtop was easy because they were done through the kaboodle customisable range, so all the hard work was done. All I needed to do was apply a few blobs of construction adhesive and then screw it into place with some angle brackets.

I managed to get the whole thing done in one weekend, so it is definitely an achievable job.”