DIY Beadboard on Our Kitchen Island

Another project that I worked on recently was adding beadboard to our kitchen island.  Our kitchen is about 10 years old - very white, very plain.  But it works, and I'm not willing to drop a bunch of money to update it right now.  A quick, cheap way (only about $20) to make it look much nicer was to add beadboard to the kitchen island.

Here is a picture of what the island looked like before.  Sorry for the bad photo quality.

I first removed the quarter-round from the bottom of the island and removed the outlet.  Next, I got a piece of beadboard (for only $20), cut it to fit, and adhered it right to the sides of the island with construction adhesive.  I had a very advanced method of clamping the beadboard to the island while it dried.

My mom and I sat there on the floor, leaning against the beadboard, playing Scrabble on my cell phone while we waited for it to dry.  Seriously, it probably took an hour to do all three sides.  Thanks for the help, Mom!

After the adhesive dried, I glued dowels in the corners of the island.  The dowels matched up to the bead of the surface perfectly, and made it look seamless where the pieces met at the corners.  Then I installed the outlet on top of the beadboard, caulked and painted it a subtle gray color.

And thanks to my talented friend, Dina, for helping me figure out what color to paint it.  And please excuse how messy my kitchen is in these photos.  See... we actually live in our house.  Crazy, I know.  It sure makes for lots of messes...