Love My Penny Island Project!

Way back when, we turned two of our old nightstands into this wonderfully useful kitchen island. 

It is still one of my favorite projects for our home!

Originally I used old cook book pages on top in the same hue as the floor and

 sealed them with a single coat of "bar top" resin. It looked great and held up

 for several years. BUT we should have sealed it with more resin. 

The edges started to peel and we knew it was time to replace it.

And here's what we did....

Yup, we put a penny top on our kitchen island and it came out 

AWESOME!

We like it!

We like it ALOT!

Oooh aaaah!

Here's a before and after. What a pretty solution!

I did NOT want to buy pennies so I scrounged up all our stashed pennies and saved

even more for months. Then I chose to clean and polish them using Brasso.

While watching "The West Wing" on Netflix.

It took about 12 hours total so do this part of the job. Would I do it again? 

Yes. 

Would I buy at least a few rolls of new pennies for my next project? 

YES. Lesson learned.

We had the boards in our stash, so I stained them using Minwax Polyshades in Maple. 

It is a stain and sealer in one. It was also in our stash.

I scuffed up the old cookbook top with sandpaper then painted it with flat black craft paint.

It makes the coins really pop against that dark background.

We did not glue the pennies down and we did not put them in any pattern.

               

Envirotex Lite is an improvement on the original formula we used over 5 years ago. 

It isn't smelly, it sets up fast and looks fantastic when you're done.

 I used a 50% off coupon and got it for less than $20.

Win win!

The light coming through our skylight during the day really brings 

out the many different hues of the coins.  As the light changes, the metallic colors change.

We love it!

                       THIS time we used triple the amount of resin to give a deep and shiny finish.

It's been a couple of weeks and I'm still being careful setting heavy containers on top.

And we will ALWAYS use trivets and pads for anything hot. 

It is just good sense.

And when the sun goes down and hits those shiny pennies the light is just dazzling!

We are very pleased with the way this project came out. The most time consuming 

part was polishing pennies. Would we do it again? 

Yes!

I'm thinking.....backsplash!

There are so very many penny projects online that I did not go into alot of detail here. If you want to tackle this project I say do your research, gather your supplies and GO! 

Even if you bought everything at full price and new, this is not an expensive project.

Try it!