Say Goodbye to Blobby Nothingness

I hated the blobby nothingness of our island before. Now it makes me smile every time I look at it. It has oomph and dimension, like a nice piece of furniture. Here is the after:

I put the polyurethane on the island today (just on the trim we added). I used Minwax Polycrylic that is water-based, but there is a polyurethane that is included in the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations kit as well. It probably would work the same, but the Minwax is just what I grabbed. I did one coat on the trim (this is what Rustoleum recommends, just one topcoat). However, others would suggest more than one coat. I just used one since I feel one works fine. I used two foam brushes, one thin one to get in the inner part of the trim which is narrow and one thick one (trimmed to fit perfectly in the Minwax can). Here's a photo of the polyurethane and brushes I used:

We also trimmed out the rest of the bottom end panels in our kitchen. The oak-looking moulding is the same 3 1/2" one as the island, but Lowe's had run out of the white, which is why we bought the oak. I am painting over it, anyway, so the color doesn't matter. We framed this the same way we framed the island. I feel better already.

I also taped up two different kinds of trim I bought. That will be decided on soon so we can frame the upper end panels on the cabinets. The top one is a casing trim, the bottom is a chair rail, both from Lowe's and both the foam material.