New Butcher Block Counter tops!

So back over the last few months Lodi mentioned that he wanted to get us new butcherblock counter tops for in the kitchen. I believe my response was, “Why? What counter tops?” See I’ve been living with the old counters for so long I had literally become just blind to how terrible they are… Kind of like living with a bad knee LOL you just live with it! The counter tops were totally replaceable though so I don’t know why I put them out of my head so completely.

This man absolutely knows how to make me happy.

He got them for me on Valentines day and installed them as a surprise!!

TBF new counter tops in the kitchen might not be everyone’s perfect Valentine’s day gift but it was certainly mine!

WAAAAAAAY back when I built the kitchen I knew I was doing a piss poor job when I built the counter tops. I was fully aware of how proper butcher block was made as I had just done it on our kitchen island.

Unfortunately though I didn’t have enough material and I didn’t have any money to buy more.

It meant instead of standing the boards up on their long grain I had to lay them down so I knew it was going to be ugly when they shrunk and adjusted with the humidity and the seasons.

At their worst these were the gaps that resulted:

And here’s the blog post of how I tore them up and “fixed” them.

Though they were never great it did help a lot!

The gaps came back (though not as severely as in the pictures) and there was quite a bit of warping. Basically I’ve only had smooth counter tops in the 7 years I’ve lived in this house for maybe 6 months.

Lodi did some research and settled on buying the butcher block counter tops they sell at Home Depot.

He kept me up to date when he was there and a few pictures later he and I agreed that the counter tops didn’t need to match from one side of the kitchen to the other.

In fact I really loved the idea of them being different!

(The counter by the kitchen sink is Walnut and the counter by the stove is Birch. Home Depot has a pretty awesome selection honestly – check it out here.)

Making that choice made it more affordable as well as the Walnut came in nothing shorter than 8 feet and the birch didn’t come in anything longer than 50 inches. (At least not with what they had in stock that day.)

The 50 inch length was literally perfect though for the section by the stove.

He set out one afternoon, tearing out the old and putting in the new.

He cut the 8 foot counter top down with a skill saw and put a big dollop of liquid nails in each corner of each counter top.

Neither REALLY needed the liquid nails as both were incredibly heavy but we always do our due diligence.

When first installed there wasn’t a huge difference between the counter tops at a glance and on opposite sides of the kitchen.

I KNEW THAT WOULDN’T LAST THOUGH.

I wiped them down thoroughly with water first, let them dry, and then we sanded them down with fine grit sand paper using our orbital hand sander. (Tip: I always give wood a drink first before sanding it – moisture makes all the little wood grains stand up for the sander.)

After that we applied what turned into over a gallon of mineral oil.

You heard me right.

OVER A GALLON.

The mineral oil in that picture wasn’t near enough so I ended up purchasing this mineral oil from Amazon. I liked it better as it was thinner than the other stuff. (So it absorbed faster.)

One thing I learned is to not bother with a rag, just use your bare hands, and just literally DROWN them.

JUST KEEP ADDING.

About every half an hour I would go (using my bare hands) and spread the oil that was sitting on the countertops out some more. The reason for that is because some pieces of wood simply absorbed more than others, it is butcher block after all and is made up of a lot of different pieces of wood.

Slowly those countertops absorbed an insane amount of mineral oil. I just kept adding and letting it sit until it absorbed no more… It took several days / treatments.

And now we’ll see how they hold up.

We have no plans of actually using these countertops as a cutting surface and we are not gonna put up with them if they stain easily. So, we may end up sealing them with marine grade varnish in the future… I’ll keep you guys updated.

For now though, aren’t they gorgeous?!

The butcher block by our stove is more in keeping with the age of the home I think but I really love the contrast of the rich walnut by the sink.

I had NO IDEA what an impact those old counters had on our kitchen before this.

It feels like our kitchen is finally complete!