Kitchen counter tops and cabinet installation

Kitchen counter tops and cabinet installation

The counter tops and cabinet are finally in Haley’s house! We moved them over there Wed morning with the help of some of their friends. Everything went in great and fit great. We did have some issues with the tite joint bolts because of where they were under the counter it was really hard to get our hands to them to tighten it all up. We had to put the counters up on 2x4’s and saw horses to keep it stable and when I finally had to leave because I was already going to be so late driving back to GA they almost had it together and said it wasn’t a problem to finish tightening them later. I love how it’s all coming together and can’t wait to see if finished next week.
Everything is away from the wall because they just finished painting that area the morning of delivery so it’s not completely in it’s place yet.


Right now they do not have the kitchen light up yet, they were waiting to get everything in before installing it because it’s a chandelier with crystals hanging on it. Once that’s in there will be a lot more light in the room.
You can see how the joints are coming together in this one, almost there!

View from the doorway into the kitchen from the dining area.

I already have fabric to sew a curtain to go on this side of the cabinet all the way across. It will look really good. And as you can see in the top left of the picture they are still painting! lol

Staining the Kitchen Cabinet.

Stain the cabinet

I got the cabinet sanded down this week and Haley and Brandon came over to look at it last night and loved it! I started on the stain today and it looks so good! Haley asked me to beat up and distress the edges of the drawers so I took a hammer and went to work. It went against everything in me to beat on something I built but I really like the way it looks. It’s not really noticeable unless you know to look for it but it’s a nice touch.

Before stain. We are going to put a piece of board at the bottom so you can’t see the supports and under the cabinet but we are waiting until we cut the 1/4 in plywood for the back and use a strip of that.

After stain.

More Counter top information

This post is a little more detailed about the counter top process.

More projects

When I talked to Haley about building the cabinet she told me she wanted to put butcher block counter tops on the other areas in the kitchen with the sink and a little eat in area. She wanted it stained the dark walnut to match the cabinet but we knew it wouldn’t be exactly the same since the wood tones started out so different. Since the wood in the cabinet was already so dark and had a red tone to it it took the stain really dark. The butcher block is a lot lighter so it’s not taking as dark. I had to cut out the whole for the sink and cut a couple of notches out of the counter top to fit around a wall so that took some time. The butcher blocks come with a factory oil finish and it took me forever to get that sanded off. I wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult and because it was oily it kept gumming up my good sander and I had to stop often to clean it out. 

Before I cut the sink hole

I’m using the cabinet as one of my work tables because I needed an extra one. I really just need to get some saw horses.

Everything set up and ready to stain. And our big pile of boxes that needed to go out for recycling. They are out of the way now.

After 2 coats of stain. It’s going to take me a while to get this done because it takes so long for stain to dry and since this will be at the sink it needs extra coats of Waterlox sealer. I found out about waterlox when doing research on the best sealer to use on counter tops, 2 other blogs I found has used it and a couple of years later their countertops were still in great shape. I want to put at least 5 or 6 coats of waterlox with 12 hours of dry time between coats. (I mentioned in my other post that I wasn’t in love with Waterlox and I wouldn’t use it again. That’s just my personal opinion and it doesn’t seem like others had the same issues with it that I did.)

And a couple of before pictures of Haley and Brandon’s kitchen so you can get an idea of how awesome it’s going to look after!

This is where the cabinet will go soon!

I’m really excited to see it all finished soon. I’m hoping we can get it done next week so it will all be finished by Thanksgiving!

Tool Time

Haley let me know that my blog would be included in the feature about her kitchen so I decided to copy and paste some of my posts from my old blog over to this one since I didn’t have time to rewrite everything. The counter tops and cabinet were built when I was married so I did edit a few things in those posts to remove the guilty so to speak.  

A post about getting started on the kitchen cabinet.

Tool Time

I bought a table saw! It was an exciting day for me! A girl that lives in our neighborhood read my blog and saw the projects that I have worked on and asked up to build a cabinet for her kitchen that they are remodeling. After meeting with her and seeing what we had in mind I knew we would be able to get it done and I was excited. On Sat Haley and I went up to Cullman, AL  to Southern Accents and they had some of the coolest stuff! I knew they had a lot of reclaimed wood but I thought it was all off site in a huge gym so we were surprised to see they have a wood shop on site and a bunch of wood in the back. The owner was out at the gym with other customers so we had to wait for him to get back to the store to give us prices and cut the wood down so it would fit in my car. We got a fantastic deal on the wood for the face of the cabinet because Haley wanted rough reclaimed wood. The rest of the frame we built with plywood to save money and make sure it was very sturdy.

The new toy. It matches my miter saw.


Three drawers on each side and doors in the middle.

The wood needs to be cleaned up but it’s really pretty. I can’t wait to see if finished!

Kitchen Counter tops

When I lived in Birmingham I had the pleasure of working with a couple in my neighborhood that were in the process of remodeling their kitchen. I built a large custom kitchen cabinet and refinished butcher block counter tops. Haley bought the counter tops from Ikea in Atlanta and brought them to me to work on. I did a lot of research before I got started and all the blogs made it seem so easy…. oh just sand it a little to get the factory coat off and then stain it and bam! you are done. Not so much. I don’t know if I had unreal expectations of how thick the factory oil coat would be or what but I sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded some more!!! I have a really good sander and I’m very thankful since I spent so much time using it. Once I got the factory finish off I started measuring everything over and over again to make sure all my cuts were perfect. I had to cut both pieces down to size, cut out the hole for the sink and faucet, and cut out a little notch to fit around a place on the wall. I had to make all the cuts perfect because if my measurements were off it would have messed everything up.

You can really see how dark the cabinet is compared to the natural wood on the counter tops in this picture. This is also before the hardware was added to the cabinet drawers and doors.

Starting the staining process. And the is the other side of the counter top that attaches to the piece with the sink. I used Minwax Special Walnut oil based stain. I ended up putting on 3 coats with at least 12 hours of drying time between coats.

I used a sealer that I had read about on 2 other blogs and they seemed to really like it but I wasn’t impressed. I’ve used a number of different poly’s on other projects and to me this stuff was the hardest to keep smooth. I had to sand it a lot between coats and I felt like it left streaks no matter what I applied it with. I ended up doing about 6 coats of sealer before I was completely happy with the way it looked and I let them dry at least 12 hours in between. I only did 2 coats of sealer on the bottom of the counter tops and I did that first so I wouldn’t have to worry about being so careful with them when I flipped it over to do the top.

The whole project was an adventure since it wasn’t something I’ve ever taken on before but I loved it!! I am so happy with the way the counter tops came out and I would absolutely do it again. Actually I hope to remodel a kitchen of my own in the future and install stained butch block counter tops because I like it so much.