Kitchen counters !

[hellymelly]

We are re-doing our kitchen and need a counter for a run of cupboards. We could re-use the old counter as its a large piece of solid wood, but I've never liked it. I don't like the colour of it. (tending towards the orangey). I'm trying to think of all sorts of possibilities and wonder of anyone has used anything unusual or reclaimed for a counter? We have a pretty tight budget and the section that needs a counter top is being built rather than bought in, so we could use almost anything.

Can't you sand and stain the original counter top a darker colour?

Or whitewash it if you want lighter?

Or paint it, sand it down and rub in a clear wax if you want a distressed look?

Depends what the rest of the room is like.

if it is orange, maybe it is pine? it goes more and more orange with age.

You could sand off the surface, dye it with Colron and then varnish, wax or oil it.

Paint will not be durable on a kitchen worktop,

I am worried about using any sort of stains etc on the wood (would prefer it lighter if we did use wood) as we prep food a lot on our counter and it needs to be food safe and able to take some rough treatment. The house is tail end of georgian, but rural rather than elegant, and the kitchen has big ship's timbers above the inglenook, doorframe and window. It needs a simple rustic looking kitchen. (I like recycled plastic with the chipped colour fragments but that wouldn't work here). I am not sure if the counter is pine, I'll ask DH. The floor is Ash planking.

well I suppose you could sand it and oil it. Sanding it will make it pale, most likely, and it will darken with exposure to light and air. Pine usually has lots of knots and will be made of square staves glued together, a bit like a butchers block.

Wood oils are usually vegetable oils of some kind, you could use a cooking oil and polish off so any excess so it doesn't go sticky (I use linseed oil on outside hardwoods as it is supposed to be quite hard wearing).

Or you could just sand it, no oil, and scrub it clean, but you will get black mould stains if it is damp, like round a sink.

Or you could cover it with zinc sheet if you want an old kitchen look.

The most practical, cheap and hygenic kitchen worktop really is.... laminated kitchen worktop, if you can find one you like, there is a vast range, and there will be a laminate merchant in your town who carries or orders even more, for use by shopfitters and hotels.

Ours are reclaimed iroko (old school desks). I am still working on getting the finish right but they have loads of character. I've oiled them with Osmo hardwax oil.

We're just in the planning stage so, but one of the things I've been considering for recycled is reclaimed slate from old snooker tables. I've heard of them being used for worktops but haven't looked into the price yet.

It isn't blocks, its one solid piece of wood, so maybe not pine.Maybe it is ash like the floor. Doesn't look like oak to me although it could be. Actually Brugmansia our friend has snooker table slate as his worktops, and they look beautiful , but he says they mark at the tiniest thing, lemon juice etc, anything like that needs to be got off straight away. (the slate is very porous) So that has put me off using it as we aren't all that careful! I'd thought of metal sheeting and may go with that, although the iroko sounds good, I have seen that used before but had no idea where to source it - where did you get yours if you don't mind me asking fossil?

From a dubious reclamation yard - you have to hunt them down from ebay or salvage websites and drive to remote yards round the back of industrial estates or on farms in the middle of nowhere. Then sand it down with an industrial sander. It was not that cheap an option in the end.

It would be cheaper to get your old counter refinished though - how about seeing if can be stripped, tinted to a better colour and given a durable finish? Can you find a carpenter who could identify the wood? Teak? Cherry? If it's solid wide planks it's probably worth the effort.

Saw a kitchen in a magazine that had counters made out of old school science lab tops. They had bunsen burner burns and grafitti on!

Graffiti

It is an expensive bit of counter, and I know we should re-use it, but I have taken against it....Not teak, not cherry, probably oak or ash. Maybe I should sand a bit tomorrow and see how it looks. It hasn't really been treated much, just darkened with oil and age I think. People before us were very fussy about their wood and I think they put it in.

Absolutely, nothing to lose by attacking a bit with a power sander. There are better finishing oils available - maybe it's had too much Danish oil?

If you are going to paint your kitchen, the ubiquitous grey-green-blues do tone down orange-ish wood quite well.

we just refinished our oak worktops - they had gone very orange and plastic-y looking from using danish oil.

sanded them right back and refinished with osmo hardwax oil in matt finish. i love my worktops again now!

ooh ok, ceres, osmo hard wax is getting written in my diary. We had beautiful ash counters on our boat, and we put Danish oil on them- it stank like a tramp! Vile. Could never use it again. The under of the counter is very oaky looking so I think it may be oak. It is about an inch and a half thick and made of three long planks fused together as far as I can tell. One of the men helping do up our kitchen wants it for his kitchen of we don't use it. I think I will, as you suggest fossil, attack it with a power sander and see how it looks. ceres did the osmo darken your counter much?