A Few Questions Answered

yep my Easter peeps are still hanging out in my jars

Saturday I started to get a bunch of comments on my Counter tops post. I couldn't figure it out until one said they came from The Lettered Cottage. She linked my post, um hello The Lettered Cottage (!) I've loved their blog since the beginning!

So I've gotten lots of comments and emails over the past few days will pretty much the same questions. I think I've responded to everyone that left a way for me to contact them. But for the others that didn't leave contact info hope this answers those questions.

It has been almost a year and we still love our counter tops. Since we had them in our old house for 3 years we have just become use to living with wood on a heavily used surface in our house. I have noticed that the finish has held up better with the Waterlox as opposed to the Tung Oil in our old house. And I think you pretty much have to order the Waterlox, no one can find it in stores.

I am a clean and organized person by nature. I go to work every day so that I can pay for my house which happens to be the most expensive thing I own (duh shocker!) So if I am putting money into something I want it to be taken care of so I really enjoy cleaning and taking care of my home.

So we don't keep junk sitting on our counters. When we do the dishes I wipe up the water around the sink because that is what I would do no matter what my counter tops were made out of. That is just me. Someone else that lives in our house isn't always as conscious about water on wood so there are some splashes left on the counter tops and so far so good. I won't name any names but since our dog doesn't have opposible thumbs to turn on the faucet you may be able to figure it out.

Our kitchen is small and closed off from the house so we don't really spend time in there unless we are preparing food. So I don't ever use it as a work space like for paying bills. So to answer the question of if I wrote on a piece of paper would the pen marks go through and etch the wood, I don't know but I would guess not, it is a pretty solid piece of wood.

Since the butcher block is stained, the dark color doesn't run all the way thru. I have had a scratch, it looked like a paper clip scratched the wood. I just dabbed some stain on my finger touched it up and wiped off the excess. That is it. Since it was so small I didn't seal it. There is one spot by the scratch that looked sort of like a meat tenderizer had hit the wood but it didn't go through the stain so I'm not sure what happened, but it just adds character so I'm fine with it. That character I can take. The counter tops looking like a cutting board I can't deal with.

A lot of people said they had children so they couldn't have butcher block counter tops. I don't have children so I may be naive but if I ever do have children I'm not planning on getting a new counter top. Like I said we don't spend a lot of time in our kitchen so I don't think my kids could destroy my counters. And we all know that little Pepper and Birdie will be perfect neat little angels and take pride in respecting their home.

But I love butcher block and I hope to one day have a huge island full of it. And there may be kids doing homework at that island and that will be ok. And I hope that if there is a pen mark on it that I will be ok with a little bit of "character"

Several people wanted to know why we went with the Ikea butcher block. Simple, it was cheap and I didn't want to put a lot of money into our renovations. We went with the Numerar over the Pronomen (I think it was replaced with Lagan) because it is what they had in stock. It is thicker more expensive. And everyone I told that I was going to do the under mount sink told me that I was a moron. But please don't listen to most people. There are a lot of people that think just because they didn't think of it or can't do it that it can't be done. They also want you to go with their idea instead of yours. Don't give in! I work with people like this everyday so I am speaking from experience.

We get so many house projects done because we I make a list and a schedule and do everything we can to stick to it. That doesn't always happen but it works most of the time. May not work for everyone but it works for us. And we don't call it a "to do" list but a "goals" list, makes it sound a little nicer.

Ok I think that about covers it. Hope this was helpful to the people that wanted help. Again thanks for the sweet comments I am SO happy that so many of you are inspired to do something a little different in your homes!!! And thanks Layla for the link.