Walnut slab countertop and bar top!!

Sound the alarm, the countertop and bar top are finished!!

There were so many painstaking steps involved in getting them finished!

Here is the tale of our two walnut slabs.

Back in March 2018, we selected slabs from my parents stash.  They have a lot of walnut trees on their property, and one such tree was pretty close to the house, getting so big, dropping walnuts on their driveway.  One day, they had a guy come to remove the tree, limb from limb.  The guy accidentally drops part of the tree trunk on my mom's vehicle!  It was totaled.

But it was time for a new car anyway, so it worked out!  Anyways, my parents proceeded to have of some the tree cut into slabs, and they are sitting under a tarp next to their driveway.  They were generous to let us have what we wanted from the pile.

So, here's what we selected!

By mid-May, we received the slabs back from Cochran's lumber, after having been kiln dried.

We had fun imagining what they would be like all finished up:

By June, we had a local guy, a church friend of my dad's, join together two bookmatch slabs for the one countertop slab with biscuit joints.  Here it is waiting for the next step:

It is too narrow on it's own for the standard countertop width, so Gabe comes up with a plan to join a scrap to the back to make it wider.

By mid-July, he's here gluing and screwing the pieces together:

Another dry fit after trimming down the ends a little:

The next big task is to do a better planing job.  After selecting the slabs, we had them planed down, roughly, but then we got them kiln dried after, which we should have done first.  Who is to know if we would have needed to plane them down after this step, I don't know, but we saw how warped they were after kiln drying and knew we had made a mis-step.

At this point, Gabe made a special jig to make the pieces flat and down to the thickness we wanted.  My morale was low at this point, thinking we will never get these things done!  But Gabe stuck to his guns, and really did a good job.

Here he is with a router, planing down with the special jig he made:

And here's a link to a video of the process too, if that helps you understand what is going on better.

After this, it had a lot of little grooves in it that needed to be sanded out.  But it was much more flat after this process!  And more the thickness we wanted.

Check it out!  Still a dry fit.

The same thing was done to the bar top, which happened to be a lot more warped, with a lot more knots and movement in it.  No pics of that one, sorry.

The next undertaking is to fill in the knots and cracks with epoxy.  We chose a black epoxy, in keeping with the black filler that was in our hardwood floor cracks and knots.

Somehow this next part of the process would take all of August...with letting the product set, it ended up needing a good number of coats--it just kept settling deeper in the cracks and knots!

Once again, my morale was low.  It looks so ugly until you after you sand and oil it up!

Is it the final trim and sanding job yet?

Nope.

Pic taken first day of September

And now, Gabe preps the pony wall for the brackets that will hold the bar top.

Also, we must come up with a plan for the "trim" piece that will sit on top of the pony wall that returns back into the wall, creating the peninsula.  My parents had some really old walnut scraps that had already dried out enough that Gabe glued together and sanded up nice to get to the thickness of the bar top, since it would be joined together with it at a 90 degree angle:

By this time, it's mid-September and speed is picking up a little on progress.  Gabe works next on two butterfly joints that will ensure that cracks will not advance:

I'm pretty sure this is the kind of thing that Gabe really loves to do.  Wood working.

Ok, slabs are set in place with edges are all cut to size and sanded a final time:

Still a dry fit, mind you.  But boy howdy, if they are this gorgeous before oiling, how are they going to look after???

We are going to find out...

(me oiling video link--btw it's long)

Does not disappoint!

Still a dry fit.  It still needs to be polyurethaned, silly!

Don't mind me, just admiring the lovely oiled wood in the evening light...

And now for a session in "lessons learned".  So.  I had done some research, reading Bob Flexner's Understanding Wood Finishing book, and concluded to apply walnut oil to the surface of the wood first.  Then, apply a wax-free shellac to seal the wood (wax-less to not repel a coat put on top of it).  Finally, do 3 coats (or more) of satin, fast drying polyurethane (would take a half day to a day to dry, depending on the weather, humidity, etc).  Well, somewhere along the line (probably all that time that went by from when I did the actual research to when Gabe was actually ready to apply the finishes) we cut out the shellac step.  Why, oh why.  Well, we learned our lesson in that it took about a week for one coat of polyurethane to dry!  We figure it really needed that separation between the poly and the oil, as it did not adhere well.  So, Gabe used mineral spirits on the wettest parts to remove the poly and on the rest, he sanded.  Oil again, and ready to shellac.   Another slight lesson we learned--shellac dries SO fast.  We had decided on a foam brush for application, but this was not a super good idea (you can see some of the application strokes under the poly) and switched to a regular paint brush about halfway thru.  It's not horrible, but if you look at it in the right lighting, you can see the shellac brush strokes.  Then for the three coats of poly, that dried MUCH faster than the initial time!  Sheesh.  Lesson learned.

Gabe applying polyurethane:

Countertop complete!  It is siliconed down to the cabinets this time.  Finis!

Now, on to backsplash.

As for the bar top, that took another couple of weeks to get done, because when Gabe installed the 5 brackets, he had to attach them to the studs, thus cutting into drywall to do so.  So, Gabe had to patch over the holes and mud, tape and paint them again.  Whew.

Attaching this large piece of wood took some doing, mind you.  The trim piece that extended around the corner was bouncing up a bit, so in order to get it lay flat, he took some large lag bolts, drilled them into the drywall on the one side, lopped off the heads, drilled matching holes in the walnut on the edge, slipped the bolts into holes where he wanted them, and then he screwed the main part of the bar top to the brackets from the bottom. 

Well, glad that's done.  Voila!

A few more detailed shots:

Now, I had ordered some bar stools from Wayfair back in May.  They are still back ordered!  I thought they would surely come before we were finished.  But no.  Currently, we are told the first of the year.  We will see!  I really like them, so I think I'm going to keep on waiting.  They did give me a 20% off for the trouble, with an additional 10% off coupon towards a next purchase, so that helps.

And that's a wrap!

Who likes Demo Day anyway??

Remember our cliffhanger, a cleared out, mangey, short shelf life of a kitchen???  The one I want to be done with in place of a wonderfully larger, bright and more functional kitchen??  Yeah, that one.  Well, here we go!

I had appointments last Monday morning (April 23rd) with the kids and contractor Dave got started demoing the kitchen first thing.  I wish I could have been there to see it come down piece by piece, but that just wasn't in the cards for me in this stage of life!!!

Out with the old:

In with the.....new?  Wait...not quiiiiiite yet.

Was:

Is:

Before removing the wall:

After, a little closer up, having already removed the wall:

Another view:

Old materials all loaded up to go to the dump.  A leeeettle bit bittersweet with those interesting countertops, but not much.

A couple of days later, we received the cabinet delivery:

Our new cabinets are the same ones we used in our first flip house.  They are Forevermark cabinets, called Ice White Shaker we got from NextDay Cabinets.

Once old drywall was removed from the space, the first order of business was to rewire electrical and plumbing to accommodate our new configuration.  Not too exciting, but very necessary!  I'll show a couple pics:

Dave installing recessed can lights in kitchen

Finished installing recessed lighting in kitchen:

Notice some of the plumbing is done for the sink in the peninsula:

In the next picture, it can clearly be seen that the doorway has been shifted to the left:

We are replacing the back deck door with a sliding door, so light switches had to move a good deal to the left:

The window behind fridge is also being replaced.

Before Dave could drywall over the new electrical and plumbing, he needed to get inspections for each of those.  Plumbing passed right away, but there were some hiccups with electrical (persnickety Loudoun inspectors, argh) so it took an extra day for that one.

Here are a few pics of the drywall going up:

Look at all the holes in our living space!  We had to move the TV downstairs that was mounted to the wall just to the right of the new location (hard to tell since it's also covered!!) cased opening to the kitchen:

Mudding and taping and partial removal of old flooring:

Oh!  And the first cabinet being installed.  Can't forget about that :)  Notice it had to be cut on the back to accommodate the stairwell height requirement down below.

Another shot of two layers of flooring and one layer of sub-flooring removed:

More cabinets going up!

Drywalling the pantry:

Lots going on in there right now!

Then, Dave removed more of the old flooring, and a strip of the diagonal-sub-flooring so he could get the old and new more level:

He's also prepping the sink base for installation :)

Some final pieces of drywall installed on the ceiling:

More and more drywall going up all the time!

Oh hey, the last couple windows came!!

Windows going in:

Over a two day period:

Voila!!  Muah!!  So much light a'gunna come in!  We'll really be able to see just how much after we paint and we can remove the plastic off the glazing.

Cabinet under the window and the one over the fridge has been installed:

Dave installing wall cabinets flanking the stove:

We had our fabricator come out last week to take measurements of the cabinets for countertop installation in a couple days. Yay!! Things are really moving now. Here's hoping the kitchen will be functional and ready for use in a week or so.
Lookie there, it's starting to look like a kitchen!!!!!!

Now if only that dern refrigerator was pushed back into place :)

As it stands, we expect the back deck door slider to arrive any day.  Backsplash tile will be delivered tomorrow to be installed this weekend by Gabe IF the granite countertops are installed later this week as hoped/semi-promised.  Hardwood floors are on target to be delivered late this week or early next week.  Appliances arrive next week!!!!!!

Well, that's all for now, folks!!!

More updates to come....