Looking for ideas on supporting the overhang of Kitchen Island countertop

witnessmenow

Hello,

We are planning on doing up the kitchen and one thing we are looking to add is a kitchen island with overhang for seating. We are looking at having 600mm Ikea units on one side of the island and whatever is left out of either a 900mm( or maybe even 1000mm) worktop as seating. So somewhere in the ballpark of 300mm. And same again over one end. Worktop will probably be 40mm solid wood.

I think ideally we would like to avoid the countertop having legs, so that means we need to support the counter over the seating area.

We were originally thinking about basically some form of shelf type bracket, or some L shaped bracket to give the support, but we came across "hidden island supports" which seem to be an American thing, but it seems like a decent solution

I don't see anything similar here, but im sure something could be made up with just off the shelf steel, although I'm not sure how compatible it would be with the Ikea counters as they are not wood on top like the picture, but maybe it could be mounted on top and counter could be routed out underneath so it fit's flush.

Any other suggestions for supporting the island countertop? Ideally the solution would be as hidden as possible and it wouldn't be something that people would hit their legs off.

Lumen

I'm not sure you need any support for a 40mm thick 300mm overhang, but the standard approach for preventing warping in wooden tables in the US seems to be c channel recessed in the underside.

witnessmenow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584901#Comment_119584901

Yeah I see mixed opinions on if its ok or not. Some places say 250mm. Also the unsupported corner (the equivalent of the bottom right of the picture in my op) will be quite unsupported. We will probably round the corner, but I don't think anything structurally significant!

Yeah I was thinking the C channel might be another option but I thought I was really going off piste at that point. Thanks for the suggestion

The Continental Op

Only thing I'd be concerned about is that the island is suitably anchored incase someone decides to dance on the table and put their weight with full leverage on the outside edge. That or someone might stand up their to change a lightbulb or sit on the edge. Like Lumen I don't think you need any support for solid wood. I would take the grain into account and if not favourable (grain follows the edge of the unit) I'd consider strengthening pieces set into the wood on the underside at right angles to the gain (hmmm not sure about shrinkage needs more thought).

witnessmenow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119585250#Comment_119585250

The kitchen units will be fixed into the floor anyways so hopefully they will be sturdy enough. We are putting in a pop up socket in the worktop and to allow space for that to drop down we will be installing shorter drawers at the top of the middle unit, which will allow us to potentially re-enforce the connection between the units and the worktop so I think we should be covered from that point of view. (below is not to scale, 2100mm is up for debate at the moment)

The worktops we are potentially going for are from woodworkers, the grain would be going from left to right, and I assume they are glued sheets, so it would be the glue providing the strength on the main overhang. I know people do tests on the glue being stronger than the timber but i guess it just feels like a lot to overhang, but happy to take advice from people who know more than me! We will be going up to woodworkers next week to take a look at the counters

phormium

I don't think you need any extra support for that overhang once the top is well secured to island and island to floor. I had same overhang without as big an end bit for the past 30 yrs in a laminate countertop without once giving support a thought! I changed it last year but pretty much same set up again with new laminate counter.

witnessmenow

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback all. We have decided to go relatively unsupported. We might put a few L shaped bracket under the counter to shorten the actual overhang even further just to be sure!

We ended up getting the counter in Noyeks, strangely enough there was a huge price difference between the two Dublin stores for the same thing, E100 pre vat in the two quotes they gave us (same exact product on both qoutes). We only called into the Finglas branch to take another look and for some reason the guy said he'd give us another quote and for some reason it was E100 cheaper! If we didn't have the printed quote from both I'd assume one of them quoted us for the wrong product.

Woodworkers didn't have the 90cm Oak counter in stock and said "ah it could be months" before they get it back in, they were suggesting cutting the 100cm one to size, which felt like a waste cause what would you do with the <10cm strip. (Also not sure I'd trust myself to cut it length ways :) ). Their location and them not being open on a Saturday was also a huge hassle for us to organise collection and they had no interest or even suggestions about organising delivery to Athlone. Really didn't get the impression they wanted the business! (I'm sure they won't cry over our single kitchen island counter top sale)

We also tried the Paneling center, they had a very perfect example of the worktop, like this was even one they showed us in the warehouse so it wasn't cherry picked or anything, didn't notice any filler or anything like that but it was literally double the price of Noyek one