Welcome to the Money Pit
You should pity my husband. I get these fantastic ideas about how to renovate my 100-year-old house, and then he has to live with some crazy mess for a few days (or a couple years) while I bring about the reality. If he can wait it out, things turn out great. Usually. This is my current mess. I'm re-doing my kitchen.
I got this awesome, reclaimed double-drainboard sink last year. It really was a steal, plus they gave me four cabinets, and the faucet fixture was still really nice. So it's been sitting there forever. (Don't even ask me about the wall demo. That happened when hubby made the mistake of leaving me alone for two days, while he took the boys to a basketball tournament. A story for later.) I was waiting for my plumber to have time to come over and get it hooked up. As things go in my world, naturally he had time right after my dad passed away and right before my first grandson was due to be born.
Well, the obvious response was to say, "Sure! This week would be great!" Except I forgot I needed a cheap counter to go under the sink. What's a girl to do except construct a butcher block counter top right in the middle of my living room so he could get it installed! Yup, that's laundry right there. And don't mind the dog. She's in the way at all times, so you'll get used to seeing her.
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I bought a bunch of these 2x2 boards for about $1.50 each.
Plus I got some stain--Golden Oak, Honey, And Black Walnut
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| Here are the boards after staining. I realized after I got home from the store, that I had NOT purchased any Honey stain, after all. Oops. So, I mixed golden Oak and Black Walnut for a third color. I left some of them natural as well |
In the next few photos, you see the counter as it came together. The front two and back two boards are full size, but the rest are cut to random lengths. I used a good wood glue, clamps and even resorted to a 10-pound barbell when I was concerned a couple boards were going to bow.
I let the whole thing dry for 24 hours. Then It was time to waterproof the surface. I had planned on working with several coats of Waterlox, but I had a few doubts about the surface, I had pre-stained the boards because I was quite sure I would not be able to cleanly stain the varying boards, once they were glued together. Once everything was dry and I flipped it over, I realized the boards were not as tight together and flush as I had envisioned.
I did not want to plane it smooth and lose my color variation. What to do...what to do? Happily we have a great woodworking shop in town. The gentleman there was so helpful and suggested a self-leveling bar top resin. It. Worked. Great. Just beautiful. I still need to do another coat to level it out a bit more, but the shine on this thing is gorgeous with the color variations between the boards. I could not be happier with the result. Not bad for a first try! The whole project cost about $100. I can't wait to make it's twin for the other side of the room.
