New Countertop in the Kitchen

Hello Friends!! I am SO stinkin’ excited to share our new countertop in our kitchen with you today!! Seriously this made a huge impact in the overall esthetic of our kitchen. Honestly it feels like this is how it was always meant to be, and then somewhere along the lines it got modernized but in the wrong way. We’ve replaced the countertop on our Kitchen island, which gets TONS of use. It’s the main hub in the kitchen, and I can’t wait for to see what a difference it’s made!

You can see the BEFORE below, we have laminate countertops that were finished to look like faux granite.

Now let me say this first, I totally understand that this could have been way worse. I know there are some pretty ugly kitchen countertops out there still lurking around from the 70’s and 80’s, so I know I didn’t have it that bad. There were even moments when I didn’t half mind them, but for the most part they just didn’t feel like, well – me! And I think that’s the important part we have to remember when designing spaces, and decorating. It’s ok if other people like something and we don’t, but when I’m working with clients I always go back to this statement ” You have to love it, because you are the one that has to live with it”, and boy was that the case with our kitchen countertops. I just didn’t love them. I wanted too, but at the end of the day, they were too modern for our house, and what I wanted our kitchen to look and feel like. And they felt so dark.

Here is the AFTER :

We custom built a new solid wood countertop out of, wait for it ….. FLOORING!

Yep, that’s right flooring! We searched high and low, weighed out all of our options, and our budget, and at the end of the day the best option was to make our own. Because our island is so wide (to accommodate for seating), standard butcher block countertops don’t come in widths for the length we needed.

So with my husbands love to build things, we partnered with Lumber Liquidators, to make this custom wood countertop out of oak flooring. I really wanted something that I could finish to the color I wanted, but I’m telling you the moment this flooring showed up, I didn’t want to touch it. It was so beautiful. 

I chose 3/4″ X 5″ White Oak flooring, found HERE, and then we trimmed out the edges with 1×3 oak trim from the local hardware store. That is the beauty about oak, is you know it will all be in the same color family, so you don’t have to worry about it not matching correctly. And I love the wider planks, because to me it feels more like what you would expect to see in an 1846 farmhouse. 

I’m so excited with how it turned out, and how it feels in our kitchen now! It’s so much brighter, and it truly feels like it was always supposed to be this way. It was worth the wait, I can tell you that. I’ve wanted our island to have this type of of countertop ever since we purchased our home 7 years ago. So if that gives you any indication as to just how excited I truly am, that you get it 😉 

I’ll be sharing a post this coming week on how we made the countertop for anyone else who might want to consider flooring as an alternative for kitchen counters. We have enough to do the other side of our countertops next to the sink and stove, but I told the hubby he can wait until colder months to start that project. Right now we will just enjoy the island, and soak up some summer sun.

Below you can see how we’ve transformed our kitchen island over the years : 

Last summer I painted our kitchen island from the white to the charcoal navy you see in the transformation above. You can see that transformation HERE. 

I’ve shared before how we’ve transformed our kitchen little by little without doing a full renovation. You can read all those tips HERE. 

AND in case you missed the link in the post, here is the link to the exact flooring we used – CLICK HERE

**A special thanks to our friends at Lumber Liquidators for working with us, providing the wood, and trusting our design dreams to make this countertop a reality! **

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