Build Me a New Life: 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.)