This is the story about how we made this:
From this:
When we moved into our house, it was brand new.
We live in a subdivision made up of new homes that you can pick & choose what kind of home you want from your particular builder.
We bought ours already built, which meant we chose nothing, but got a "deal" on our pre-existing home.
That meant, we won the prize of purple swirl countertops.
And light wood cabinets.
And gray swirl linoleum.
We had a lot of work on our hands.
The countertops were our last project to make our kitchen more homey & more our taste.
But they're expensive.
We had decided to go for butcher block & were ready to buy & install it.
and showed Mitchel (we were also in the market for a backsplash), who surprised me by saying, we could totally make countertops from yardsticks.
You serious?
He was. And after a little research, we knew it would work.
Demo began & injured us both.
Laminate is sharp!
He actually trimmed our island.
It used to hang over on the side you can see.
It was HUGE.
Now, it's not ginormous, & feels much more appropriate.
Also...ignore that messy kitchen.
Yikes. That's the worst part of projects...the mess.
After the laminate was pulled off, we (more he- I was the kid wrangler) glued & clamped down yard sticks.
Gorilla glue is fascinating.
I would never want to accidentally glue something together with that.
I think it would be stuck, for like, ever.
All the yardsticks were glued down with that stuff.
We weighed them all down with clamps & heavy books to get a good tight fit.
They might not ever come off.
He had a good rhythm going.
Gluing turned out to be fun & easy.
Then came the sanding.
With Minnie Mouse sunglasses.
He's a nut.
And, yes, our house was covered in sawdust.
Once he moved off the island, we jerry-rigged an enclosed space with plastic sheeting to keep it all in "one" place. I'm still finding saw dust in random places.
Oh well.
All for a good cause.
After all that sanding was done, we painted polyurethane over it all, lightly sanded, then painted another coat. We did that again, & ended up with 3 coats of polyurethane.
Then we got to add a subway tile backsplash, thanks to the fact that yardstick countertops are waaaay cheaper than most other countertop surfaces:).
It feels so much brighter & cheery.
I like to think we're bright & cheery.
:) Most of the time.
We decided to sand most of the numbers & words off, but to leave just a hint of what that wood actually is.
I like how it turned out.
It's got character baby.
I guess purple swirl countertops have character too.
But we like this character a lot better.
Now if we could just find a way to buy yardstick appliances...
just kidding.
