I Feel Infinite: Kitchen Reno Part 2 Butcher Block

Our kitchen remained like that, just painted cabinets, thrown together floating shelves and a cracked laminate countertop for probably another whole year. Then I jumped in to work on the sunroom and when I painted our door a dark gray, I had a vision. I didn't hate the gray I had on the cabinets I just thought it looked a little bland
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It was supposed to be 2 shades darker than the wall color but with the lighting in our house it looked like it matched the wall color. (The wall is painted between the cabinet and the shade) So I did what ever young person does in this day and age. I posted the picture of one cabinet painted and asked if anyone thought it looked too dark.

Everybody responded well to it so I thought alright! Off to the races. I should add that I used a small sample of this color that I had from the door to paint my lowers. I did not buy ProClassic and it was in satin. I plan to re-do these cabinets with semi-gloss using proclassic. It is worth it as these have not held up as well as the uppers.

This is a good after. They looked awesome. They photographed more black than gray but man are they pretty. I finally convinced my husband after 3 long years of having these butcher block slabs in our possession to attempt to rip them and make them work as counter tops. I called around locally to see how much it would cost to pay someone to rip them for us and it was somewhere around $500 dollars. WHHHHAT. After looking around online I did see where you could cut the butcher block with a circular saw and a guide but you should invest in a nicer saw blade. I went to Home Depot and bought the Diablo blade and one spring day while Chris was asleep I went in the garage and did it myself. I bought a nice long guide and it was really not that big of a deal after all! Fast forward to 2015 Chris and I had a whole week off work and it took every bit of that week to get it done, but we did it.

Step 1: Remove old countertops

It's good to have a strong yet thin man to get in these awkward positions that I certainly could not fit in. HAH.

After removing the existing counter tops which of course was way harder than we thought it would be we moved on to measuring and cutting the butcher block. I had already ripped them to size and sealed them. I did this to save time. The biggest mistake we made was leaving the factory edge. The edges are rounded so where our two seams met, we had to use a lot of wood filler and the seam is noticeable. I sealed our butcher block with Enduro-Var from General Finishes which was recommended to me at Woodcraft. I was planning on using Waterlox which I had heard about on numerous blogs but wasn't looking forward to the smell or having to wait a day between each coat. Especially since I would have wanted 7 coats! Enduro-Var dried within 2-3 hours, and can be reapplied in 4. There is very little smell and it had just a slight amber color added to it so I didn't even stain these boards. I sanded them and applied the Enduro-Var. 3 coats on the bottom and 6-7 on the top. I used a plain foam brush and 1 quart was enough. It had held up beautifully! No stains, no water marks, nothing. I HIGHLY recommend finding Enduro-Var and using it. That product is one of the reasons I am even bothering to blog this kitchen reno, I saw very little information on anything other than waterlox and wanted to spread the word on Enduro-Var. BTW General Finishes doesn't know I exist, I'm not pimping their product for anything other than my own love.

Installing these puppies we decided not to do mitered cuts. We worked out what would be best without having to buy additional boards. We had 3 boards 6 ft long. They make better methods for joining boards but we didn't want to spend any additional money at this point. Go visit this blog for tite joint fasteners.

Added Support

We had to build up the back corner to hold the counter tops level also.

We found these to hold the butcher block together and keep them from pulling apart