Home remodel Project- Wood block prep area

So when our tower of terror came down, we ended up keeping the bottom half of that oven tower for the storage. Luckily the oven had a wood slab under it, so we could use that as a base for our project.

Cut out down to the slab above those drawers, so the wood slab was below our current countertops.

Endcap is holding the mixer and red basket.

Well I knew I wanted something on the end there. Originally I was thinking a huge butcher block prep area that we could use as a cutting board etc.  But in doing some research, we decided that was not the way we wanted to go.  We looked at the hardwood needed to cover that area and the amount of skill and time it would take to make something like that was beyond our limited capabilities.  So we decided to turn it into a wooden countertop type surface. To be used as a prep area, just not used as a direct cutting board surface.

Hubby found some hardwood maple plywood at Home Depot for 40$. It was a huge 4x8, THICK and heavy slab, waaaayyy bigger than what we actually needed, but realized quickly we could use the leftovers for other projects. 

So we had Home Depot do their "first two cuts free", into smaller, more manageable slabs that we could fit into the back of our Kia. (Yes, I go to Home Depot and buy ridiculously large items in a Kia).

After rifling through the entire pile of slabs to choose from, we came home with the prettiest patterned slab.(IMHO)

THE slab 

Cut down to the correct size.

Cut down to correct size.

So step one was complete. We ended up going back to Home Depot and Lowes and found some 2"  pine chair moulding to go around three of the outer edges and a thin piece of basic floor moulding to go on the counter side. The counter side we knew we wanted to cover a little bit of the actual countertop with some sort of lip or edging, because when we took the tower out and cut down, we realized the people who built this house had put in the countertops a little crooked and with gaps. So they used lots of basic moulding as decorative endging to get it to look even etc. There at one time had been a piece of backsplash on the tower to also camouflage these imperfections.  So we used this lip to cover the small crooked gap and now you would never know there was an issue.

Using a miter saw we cut those pieces to fit together. Using Tite Bond and a brad nailer, we put these edges on and clamped them while the adhesive dried. 

Once dried we used some wood putty to fill in any small corner gaps and the brad nail holes.  Did a light sand and used a wood stain to color. Following up with 4 coats of Poly coat and a 3 day waiting period, we were in business.

The great part is the chair railing hangs down just a little bit, so it fits snug and secure on the endcap and won't slide off. We reinforced it using sticky back velcro on the underside, so if we ever want to pull it up and redo, we can easily and don't have to mess with nails or glue or anything like that. This countertop is so secure, it is like we used Gorilla glue!

You can see the two types of moulding we used to create the edging.

You can see the funky grain in the edge moulding, gives it a cool zebra wood type look.

This color is exactly the color of my kitchen table, so it matched perfectly

taaa-daaaa.

How our next project...make a similar slab(with the leftovers) to cover the small cabinet next to the stove.

current cabinet top, we tried making from pine slabs, just to see how difficult it would be.  It was OK for an initial attempt, but now that we know what this plywood can do, we will be switching it out.

STILL TO DO:
Prying off the old brick veneer backsplash
Painting
Backsplash
Changing out Hardware
New hanging light fixtures
new ceiling (ugh the dreaded popcorn needs to come down!)

I feel like I am getting somewhere, but at the same time i feel it will be forever until it is all done.