A story about purple swirl countertops

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.

Then I found this,

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.