Suburban Renewal, Vol. 1

August 04, 2014

Suburban Renewal, Vol. 1

Earlier this Spring, I painted my kitchen. It went from drab to fab over the course of a week. If you look closely you can see the old brownish-greenish color in the top right of the photo. A huge improvement. After that was finished, I had my eye on sprucing up my kitchen island. Fast forward to June and our 21st Wedding anniversary and you have the rest of the story! My sweet husband informed me that we were going to go out and about and spend the whole day together. A whole day with my love sans kids? Sounds great!! Of course, I love my kids, but the Mr. and I were kind of a "thing" before they came along and well, we'd like to keep that "thing" going until they're long gone!

One of our stops during our day was at Ikea. Brian knows that I love to walk around and daydream, shop for goodies, and make the occasional stop for sustenance in their restaurant.

After we found our $16,000 dream kitchen, Brian took me over to the kitchen island area and just started talking to a sales person and proceeded to order a butcher block top for my island! Can you say excited?! Totally.

You can see the sad state of my former island in the picture showing my paint job. Original laminate top, stained, chipped, and plain old ugly!

The butcher block comes as a plain piece of wood with a light covering of preserving oil to keep it safe until you get it home and put it into place. I bought Watco Butcher Block oil and set to work! To preserve the top and finish it you first sand down the top with a 150 grit sandpaper and then apply a nice coating of the oil and let it sit for 6 hours. During this entire process it was important NOT to touch the counter top at all or to set anything on it. Since I have a lot of "traffic" in my kitchen, I chose to apply the oil in the evening after all my people were in bed. That way there would be nothing to distract me or any little hands to "accidentally" touch the freshly oiled counter top. This process was repeated 2 more times, each time using a more fine grit sandpaper. After the final application, the directions require that you let it sit untouched for 72 hours. Which, by the way, seems like forever. However, somehow we managed to achieve this without incident! Rather remarkable, considering the amount of tragedies that I had imagined in my mind during this process!

Truly, I don't obsess about tragedy...but, on the heels of past experience with my children it seemed highly probable that I should be prepared.

After the initial oiling process was over I made a beeswax mixture to apply over the top as an additional protection. I found the "recipe" on the Woodworkers Guide website. It was really simple to make and inexpensive. I applied a nice thick coating of the wax and let it sit on the counter all day while we were out. After we returned, I wiped off the excess and then buffed it with a soft cloth. It didn't make it glossy, but gave it a nice, soft sheen. So far, it has been wonderful to clean and has repelled water like a champ! Our next step will be to cover the ugly fake wood with bead board and to paint the whole island.

Now...if I could just decide what color to paint that!

Feel free to ask any questions!