Kitchen island
Make room for the room.
The one piece of a kitchen everyone ends up leaning on. Wright’s designs and builds kitchen islands for Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti homes, and every one of them starts with the three feet of floor around it.
$4,000 to $15,000 for the island alone in Southeast Michigan. Price the whole kitchen
It’s a game of inches.
An island is a clearance problem before it’s a design one. Thirty-six inches between the island and any counter, wall or appliance is the floor. Forty-two to forty-eight is what a two-cook kitchen wants. Forty-two on the seating side, and forty-eight if anyone will walk behind a seated guest. Most owners find on paper that the island needs to lose six inches, and finding that on paper costs nothing. The kitchen layout guide shows where an island fits in each plan.
How big, by how big the kitchen is.
Past about four feet deep nobody can reach the middle from either side, so the center becomes a place things go to be forgotten. Length follows the floor. The island sizing guide walks through the math room by room.
A prep island, if anything
A full island rarely fits once the clearances are honored. A narrow eighteen to twenty-four inch prep surface can, and so can a mobile island on casters. Small kitchen ideas cover the alternatives.
Six by three
Four feet by two and a half gives you prep surface and storage. Six by three supports two stools plus a working zone, and it’s the island Wright’s builds most. Often it’s an island installation rather than a remodel.
Seven to ten feet
Three and a half to four feet deep, and long enough to carry a sink, seating and a working zone without crowding. Two counter runs of twenty-four inches plus a seam is the practical limit for the stone.
Pull up a stool. Mind the knees.
Counter height is thirty-six inches. Bar height is forty-two, paired with twenty-four-inch stools. Every seat wants twelve to fifteen inches of overhang, and anything past twelve inches in stone needs hidden steel, not faith. Decide early whether anyone in the house will sit there. Plenty of islands get seating nobody uses while the kitchen loses its floor to it. That conversation happens on the kitchen design side, before anything is ordered.
Twenty to thirty pounds a square foot.
A six-by-three top is carrying three hundred sixty to five hundred forty pounds, so the cabinet base under it is plywood and an overhang past twelve inches gets steel L-brackets set into the substrate. A stone cantilever with no steel cracks, usually at the seam, usually within two years. Quartz, granite or quartzite is the next decision, and the edge profile is the one after that.
- Quartz, installed$65 to $120 per sq ft
- Granite$60 to $100 per sq ft
- Quartzite$100 to $200 per sq ft
- Marble$120 to $250 per sq ft
- Waterfall edge, both ends$2,000 to $5,000
Sink in the island, or against the window.
Against the window if you like looking outside while you work. In the island if you want to face the room. An island sink adds $2,000 to $3,500 for the drain and the vent, and it eats the largest continuous stretch of prep surface you have. Wright’s usually recommends a small, offset prep sink instead of the main one, with the countertop and backsplash planned around it.
A cooktop in the island works only when the island is long enough to keep forty-two inches on every working side, and you accept downdraft or a hood hanging mid-room. In most Michigan kitchens the range stays on the wall, and appliance installation gets simpler for it.
Look up before you pick the pendants.
Is there a soffit or a duct where the pendants would hang, and can it move. Then look at the panel and count spare spaces. Code wants at least one GFCI outlet per four linear feet of countertop, and any built-in appliance in the island gets its own twenty-amp circuit. A second dishwasher or a wine unit is two circuits, not one. A new circuit runs $500 to $800 and a panel upgrade runs $2,000 to $4,000. The kitchen lighting page covers what hangs above once the ceiling is settled.
The half nobody plans.
Drawers beat doors inside an island. The practical set is a pair of pan drawers at twenty-four to thirty inches wide, a utensil drawer and a trash pull-out. Seating costs cabinetry: knees take that space, so a six-foot island with stools on one long side has about half the storage of one without. Custom cabinets make the most of what’s left, and a pantry nearby takes the overflow.
The wall in the way.
The 1960s and 1970s ranches that fill Canton, Livonia and Novi were built with the kitchen boxed off, and those walls usually come out without drama. A non-load-bearing wall runs $1,000 to $3,000. A load-bearing one needs a beam and runs $3,000 to $8,000. In a 1925 bungalow the wall to the dining room is often load bearing, with plaster and a chase inside it, so Wright’s opens a small exploratory hole before quoting a beam. A guess there is a guess about several thousand dollars. Removing walls in older Michigan homes goes deeper.
Two to three weeks, start to stone.
That’s for an island dropped into a kitchen that is otherwise finished. Water, power and walls each add time, and the Wright’s process sets the schedule before the first day.
A few days to set and level the base, template the top, then a week or so for the stone to be fabricated and installed.
Add a week for electrical if new circuits have to be run, and two to three more if the island gets water and a drain.
Plan on four to seven weeks and on losing the use of both rooms for part of it. Financing can spread the cost of the larger job.
Kitchen island questions, answered.
Can I add an island without a full remodel
How much does a kitchen island cost in Southeast Michigan
Is a kitchen island worth it at resale
What should I check before calling anyone
Bring a tape measure and your floor plan.
Wright’s is a design-build contractor, so the person who draws the island is the one who answers for it on site. Clearances, stone, steel, circuits and the wall, settled in one plan.
