Timber kitchen surface - tell me the truth before I spend spend spend!

[GinghamChic]

Ok - it's crunch time. About to spend our hard earned savings on a kitchen of our dreams and I really have my heart set on solid oak tops.

BUT my head keeps telling me it's going to be an expensive mistake.

Really not a granite fan and I just feel our house would really suit the wood top.

Are they just a pain in the bum? Would love to hear from those of you that have them.

We have just moved to a house with wooden worktops. There are black marks all round the sink... No draining board so I am battling with it. How do you get rid of the marks before oiling? Do you just sand them?

The 30 year-old wooden bench tops in my kitchen are in damn good shape. They appear to have that varnish they use in pubs. Indestructible.

We're about to renovate so anxious to have timber as hard-wearing as the stuff we inherited.

we have oak worktops.

we are not particularly careful. in fact, not careful at all.

they look great. we used to use danish oil and i found that a pain - it often looked patchy and over time went quite orange.

we sanded them back to bare wood a few months ago and then used osmo polyx hard wax oil. it is really easy to use, has a nice matte finish and is very hardwearing. you don't need to sand before re-oiling. i wouldn't use anything else now.

We have iroko. Looks lovely but it's quite dark so shows up every speck of dust. We use Osmo on it, but I think in the five or so years we've had it we've only re-oiled twice, mainly because it's such a palaver and we're lazy. You have to wait several hours between coats and you need several coats.

Last time I don't think DH sanded it properly (yes, it needs to be sanded as well), or maybe it was still a bit damp, and it degenerated really quickly and looked worse than before the re-oiling.

We have an Aga, so that's handy as a surface for hot pans, plus a trivet for the kettle. But I gave up wiping the splashes after about a week - stuff that.
I think the black is just the colour the wood goes when damp - will go away if left to dry out I think.
Total pita.

I have oak ones too. I used Danish oil (useless) and various other ones till friend lent me his worktop treatment from Howdens, it's called Unico and is the one I tried to get from Screwfix originally but they didn't have it.

It's a hardwax I think and it's impermeable. Really really good - it does set with a slightly sheeny finish, more than the oil I was using, but once it's there it stays there even around our very drippy sink.

The only thing is not using a knife, on the worktops - but we have a separate area for that (old butchers block thing) and have trained the kids to cut stuff on there!

The worktops are really nice.

I always thought granite would be nicer, I didn't know it took maintenance?

I think its ok if you don't wash up :-) mine has marked a bit ( been in 5 years) its due a resand and seal.

You can't really leave water on it and trivets are neccessary.

Habe you looked at corin? I might have corin next :-)

Thanks so much everyone for your rresponses!

I think am an now 60:40 in favour and !!. It seems the key is getting the best product to seal them with.

Have seen corian too. How does it compare with granite.

the Rustins stuff looks like a 2-part varnish, which is fine, but water will still get in round the taps and sink.

A sink like the Astracast Bistro does not sit on the worktop so it will happen less.

Black marks are caused by water and are very very hard to remove, especially when there is a tap in the way. You can sand off the top and use Oxalic Acid to bleach them, but then may have to dye the wood back to match the colour.

Oils are not actually waterproof, I was surprised to learn.

A wooden worktop is no trouble as long as it is fitted in a showroom. Not so good in a kitchen.

I have the astracast bistro sink
Pics on profile.

Corian does everything I wanted my worktop to do: goes well with the rather minimalist (well, except for the clutter ) kitchen, easy to clean and less 'hard' than granite/quartz.
I was all for a natural stone worktop until we had a holiday flat with granite worktops and I disliked how cold and unforgivingly hard the surface was. It is hard to explain, but Corian is less cold to the touch and less hard: I have never chipped a glass just by putting it down like I did repeatedly in the holiday place. Maybe that's just me - I know plenty of people who love their granite and it looks great.

Niggles: the grooves cut into it to give a draining area run the wrong way - they go downhill away from the sink which is a real pain.
It can be scratched if you try hard enough - no cutting on worktop. Which I always thought everybody kney and what chopping boards were for, but apparently not - I am looking at you, DMiL .
Does not take ultrahot stuff ie frying pans directly. Not a problem for me, I have a largish ceran hob which I also use to put stuff down on. And have 'built in' metal trivet, but tbh hardly every use that.

Our Corian was fittend by a company who had previously only fitted commercial applications of it (ie dental surgeries) and we only found out afterwards that we had been their first domestic client. I'll not bore you with the technical details, but at one point they had to redo the whole thing and we are still left with the draining 'board' problem - BUT we ended up paying almost nothing for it, so I am not complaining.

Gosh, that was long. Good luck with your decision.

I 2nd the astrocast bistro sink.

Go for a hood quality hard wood with grain variation. Looks great and covers a multitude of sins.

Love you all - have been busy researching the astro sinks today!!

We have iroko worktops and a front-to-back sink, so if water drips off taps it is going onto the ceramic. They are oiled with Osmo and they seem to be bulletproof so far (10 months), although the finish is a bit variable. But then they are reclaimed so may be from different sources.

From numerous previous threads like this I'd conclude that oak (although sold everywhere) is not a durable wood for worktops as it's very susceptible to going black from water or ferrous metals, and that Danish oil (whilst worktop installers recommend it ) is not as good as hardwax oil. But most people only have one kitchen so it's hard to know how it would have turned out if you'd tried something different.

I've had oak for about 18 months and I love it - would definitely have again. My heart did sink the other day when there was a black ring on it where a wet can had been left on the surface for two days But I just sanded it and put some cooking oil on - really a 2 minute job, honestly. And the offender me should have known better really. Did catch my teen slicing bread directly on to it in the early days - rubbbed some cooking oil into the marks and all fine again. No black around the sinks...yet.

We have Iroko work tops, oil them every now and then.
7 yrs on still look great, heat proof and easy to maintain, have got better with age.
Our old house had beech which was a real pain to look after .

I'm sold girls.

I'm thinking Iroko + Osmo + front to back sink = safest option?!

I've got both. Had for 8 years.
Iroko on most & granite on the island.
The Iroko looked good for the first 2 years when I could be bothered to oil, but now looks very worn; black rings with pale areas by the sink.
I love the look of the wood but definitely would choose granite or a composite next time.