Three Doors Down: The Countertop Remix 2

So we left off Friday evening with the peninsula side completely removed and a couple of doors stripped of their paint/varnish (more on that further down). You can catch up on the first Remix here. 

Bright and early Saturday morning we had our Lowe's list made and our coffee on order and another stop planned for the Habitat ReStore. We headed to Lowe's to pick out our stain finish, our polyurethane and all the necessary fixins' we needed in order to finish the job. It turns out when we were removing the peninsula that part of the column had to come with it so we needed to pick up some boards to patch up some areas as well as some stainable wood filler. We also needed to pick up some wood finishing veneer edging to go along the edges of our countertops. When 'solid oak doors' say they are 'solid' they really mean 'solid-oak-until-you-get-to-the-particle-board-part' so that meant the doors that we had to cut more than a quarter of an inch off (aka, all of them) needed to be finished with oak edging. 

Here is what we got and let me tell you it is the best thing since sliced bread. I might make things out of just veneer edging from now on. This stuff is magic. It's sandable, fillable, stainable, paintable, everythingable! And it irons on...how cool is that? Needless to say we loved it and were more than pleased with the results when put so closely with our oak doors. 

So while J and I were sanding and stripping the paint off the last door the boys were inside removing the other side of the kitchen counters. Here is a shot of the sink side with the formica mostly off. They said this side was a lot easier to remove since it was all one chunk instead of two glued pieces like the peninsula. So they had this entire side off in about 45 minutes, including taking the sink out. 

In here we also had to remove the disposal and make sure the dishwashing hoses were still intact and that the sink hoses weren't falling over and leaking behind the cabinets. Fun times. 

See this is what a countertop should look like underneath. We could have almost sanded this baby down and stained it directly. If we had more time to try out things we might have experimented, but we knew the doors were a look we wanted so we kept with the original plan and yanked 'em out. 

Here is what the chicas were working with outside and in the garage. This paint stripper is literally thebombdotcom. This size jug was $15 and lasted us for three coats per door, plus stripping of our mailbox and there's even some left over! This brand doesn't smell as rancid as other stripper's (I really can't leave out the word 'paint' can I? It sounds too inapprops) paint stripper's that I've smelled (it had a nice orange-y scent). However, don't let that fool you, this stuff is powerful with a capital P so we brought out some attractive rubber gloves and went to town. The stuff is really easy to handle, we poured it on pretty thick over the surface of the door then brushed it on and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. Then with our putty knife we went over the door scraping of the gunk and residue to leave it nice and woody. 

See how awesome this stuff works? It's crazy, I tell ya!

And the final finish underneath all that yuck was just pure woody oak. B-A-utiful. We repeated this process with the two other doors then sanded it down with sanding pads meant specifically for paint stripping. They come in course and fine and we used one right after the other to prep them for the boys to install and for us to stain later on. 

Here is the counter top on the peninsula! In between the picture above and the picture below the boys meticulously measured and fit the door to fit around the two columns. An extra seam had to unfortunately be made but was completely unavoidable unless we wanted to take out either our upper or lower cabinets. The seam falls where Sir Mix-a-lot, my kitchen aid mixer, lives anyways so it's all good. 

And here is the door on the other side put in, with the sink just resting to make sure all the cuts were right. If you look at the edge of the counter you can see the particle board style that was hidden inside. 

But never fear, veneer oak edging is here! This is the kitchen side of the peninsula with the oak edging ironed on and doesn't it look fabulous? This is the point that we started having company show up for our grill out we had for my dad's b-day (yes he spent his birthday installing doors for a countertop, funny how dads are, huh?) 

This is about the point we took a break to hang out with some fam and finally get to use our grill that we got from Dad and J - well we technically didn't even grill because we couldn't peal ourselves away from our kitchen and the family got hungry so they took over and thank goodness they did because we were famished. We got about a two hour break and I snuck in a trip to Lowe's for more edging so we could get to staining once our company left. And since our Lowe's ran out of edging (because some girl had been buying rolls of it all day...) our lovely Aunt R ran out to another location for us and picked up another roll, so sweet. 

So next time we will cover staining and waiting and poly and waiting and crossing fingers and the big reveal!