Kitchen Semi-Reveal

So I say “semi” because I definitely wouldn’t say the kitchen is finished yet, but it’s so far beyond our starting point that it seems appropriate to show off our progress. There are still some things to take care of (like paint that one section of wall behind the range, and eventually put up a tile backsplash). But the bulk of the work is complete!

Let’s take a journey down memory lane with some “before” pictures.

And here are roughly the same angles of the kitchen now:

Hopefully it’s objectively a better-looking kitchen than before. There is still more work to be done, including some unfinished painting, and perhaps a backsplash. Plus, the countertops look a little sparse. Because butcherblock takes a while to seal (we’ve done 3 coats of all-natural, food-safe, 100% boiled linseed oil so far, and want to get at least 5-8 total), we are making an effort to keep our counters empty for the next few weeks. We still use them for cooking, but put everything away somewhere else. I think it will look more like a kitchen once we have our knife block, utensils, salt, pepper, and olive oils back on the counter (although we’ve made a pact to keep it more clear than it was before! — we’re both loving the extra counterspace to work on!).

And here’s one final touch to the kitchen that we love — a new light fixture from West Elm! It looks so much better than the “boob light” that was there before.

Ikea butcherblock countertops, part 3

This is the third and final chapter in our Ikea butcherblock countertop saga. Which, honestly, wasn’t much of a saga.

First, we “templated”, cut, and stained our Ikea countertops. Next, we removed our existing laminate countertops, and staged the new pieces to see how they’d look on our cabinets. Now it was time to actually install them.

And here’s the part where I’m honest and say it did not go according to plan.

First, here was our plan:

When we put the pre-cut and pre-stained (by us) pieces of butcher block, we were amazed by how well they fit. Especially the mitered corner, which went together almost seamlessly. Our crazy “just measure the inside and outside lengths, and draw a straight line to connect them” method of angle-measuring worked! The only issue was that piece #2 was just a tad too long. This didn’t really surprise us, because we had intentionally cut outside of our marked lines, knowing it would be easier to shave off a bit more than come up short.

And for whatever asinine, insane reason, we thought it would be best to do that “shave off a bit” on the mitered end, not the straight end. Actually, I do remember the reason — we had made a mis-cut (as part of learning to work with our tools), so there was a little spot that we wouldn’t mind nicking off while we were at it.

So we got out the jigsaw, and that’s where it went downhill. It was a very, very bad choice, and we only have ourselves to blame. The jigsaw was the wrong tool, and was being wielded by complete novices (us). We ended up ruining the mitered cut by (inadvertently) creating a bevel, where the top surface of the countertop was slightly shorter than the bottom, meaning now our mitered joint didn’t fit together. But we couldn’t take off any more of the length. This happened because a jigsaw blade is flimsy, and in unskilled hands, it’s virtually impossible to make a straight, not-beveled cut. It was stupid to not use the circular saw. But now we know for next time.

When doing the sink cutout, we ran into the same issue — we were trying to use the jigsaw when we should have been using the circular saw (Fortunately, however, our sink was a drop-in, and so it masks the embarrassingly poor cuts we made).

So to make the sink cutout, first we placed our template where we wanted the sink to go (the template came with the sink, but you can make your own by tracing the sink, otherwise).

Then we flipped the countertop over and made our marks on the bottom, tracing the template where we then would make our cuts.

Next we cut out the sink hole (bonus points if you manage to make a straight cut and NOT catch anything on fire, like we did!). We made sure that our cutout piece was supported underneath, so it didn’t come crashing down when we were finished (and break pieces of the countertop while it was at it).

Then we put the countertop back on the cabinet bases, and hope that the drop-in sink covers the shame of  extremely crooked cuts …. rejoice! It does!

So now that everything fits (with the exception of our screwed-up mitered corner), it’s time to secure that baby down. We decided to go with the screws provided by Ikea, rather than glue (which had been my original plan). They are fairly straightforward — it’s a little corner bracket, where one side attaches to the cabinet base, and the other side attaches to the countertop. Easy enough, except for the part where you have to crawl into the cabinets to be able to reach it — Alex deserves an award for doing this part. There was a lot of banging around and cursing, so it can’t have been fun.

And finally, we had to seal up the seam between the two big pieces. I put caulk in there first, one – because I love caulk, and two – I had some half baked idea that it would make the seam waterproof. At least I was fairly confident it wouldn’t hurt anything. As far as I know, it won’t. Then I came along and put wood filler on top of the caulk, so I could come back and stain it to match the countertops (after sanding down the wood filler).

This was after applying the stain, but before wiping it off, so I promise it doesn’t look this weird in real life.

So there we have it — our countertop is installed. It feels like the end of an era. A countertop templating, fabrication, and installation era. While the kitchen isn’t complete yet, it’s miles away from it’s starting point, so I’ll post some pictures of the current status.