My wife would like me to outfit our new kitchen with Mahogany or Teak($$$) countertops. As anyone had experience with building countertops that last? What type of finish would you recommend? Should the counter be face or edge grain up?
Any comments at all on the subject would be welcome.
Thank you.
Replies
I, too am looking for information on this. We are remodling our house and kitchen and we want to put cheery and maple counter tops in our new kitchen. Looking for any words of wisdom, pitfalls and recommendations on finishes.
Many thanks,
Kell
Greg,
Kitchen countertops need to take a terrific amount of abuse, they get burned, soaked, steamed, cut, scratched, stained, and dented. I know of no wood or finish for wood that can take this kind of abuse and still look good after even six months of normal use. This is the reason why you rarely, if ever, see wood used as a kitchen counter top material.
I don't, in general, counsel following conventional wisdom when designing, but in this case I think there are very good reasons for not using wood as a countertop material in a kitchen. Invest your money in granite or metal or one of the other proven materials for your counters, in the long run you will be happier.
John W.
Had dreams of the same thing at one point; did the research (including looking at ones that had been in place for a few years out of rock maple), and I'm with JohnW. They look great going in, but even the (unpronounceable)-impregnated stuff will look ragged unless treated extremely carefully.
I ended up just doing an island top out of curly maple, finished in phenolic resin varnish, and it has held up for five years now under moderate abuse. It will need refinishing eventually, but has done fine with the laminate taking most of the beating, and at least gets more wood in the kitchen.
/jvs
Unless this is the "show" kitchen and you have another where the real work will occur, I would stay away from wood countertops..as others have said. I might consider doing all the counters as butcher block, but even that is a lot of maintenance. I put "silestone" in out kitchen and then added a bar made of curly maple...under about a zillion coats of varnish. It's only been a year, but it all looks good.
Mike
Greg -
I was surprised when I discovered just how 'soft' teak is, comparitively speakng that is. Mahogany not the hard, either, if we take something like hard rock maple as being "hard". That said, consider what a counter top must endure. I think you'd agree once you take into consideration opening cans of food, dropping - even ever so slightly - a large sauce pan full of spaghetti sauce down on an edge ..... so on and so forth - you'd agree that a counter top, in partcicular wood, needs to be quite durable. I claim no expertise in the area but my perception is that neither of these two timber species would be applicable.
OK, now you have to explain all this to the wife. I can understand your situation! (grin).
Get a few pieces of mahogany and glue up something you can put on your existing counter as a test. See if it holds up well enough to warrant further consideration. That is if you have the luxury of time to conduct such a test.
From Beautiful Skagit Co. Wa.
Dennis
I've come to the same conclusion as I ponder design options for my kitchen remodel - wood is out except for possibly some small areas as some of the other posters have noted.
What got me thinking though was a comment about durability. I plan to build a deck of Ipe this summer, and everything I hear is that it is one fo the hardest and most durable woods available. Made me wonder if it would be a reasonable choice for countertops?
The problems with wood countertops isn't so much durability as it is appearance and the perception of how clean they can be gotten.
Most people who grew up with Formica countertops are used to getting their countertops shiny, sanitized, clean. A wood top that has been sealed with a penetrating oil will always look dirty to these people. If you seal the top with a hard film finish that cleans well, the finish will need fairly regular repair or refinishing to keep it good looking.
John W.
There used to be ashop in Paradise, Ca. that did tops in mahogany and other woods too. It's been along time since I order from them and I will try to recall the name and post it later. Their prices were very reasonable, compared to some of the other companies(Block Tops, Anaheim Ca.)
Here you go:
http://www.perfectplank.com
About 15 years ago my dad built a butcher block 3'x3' 3" thick using Oak and Walnut each piece was 2"x3"x4" long and glued up in a checker box configuration end grain up. The only finish has been mineral oil with additional coats ~once a year. Other than a few scratches from a meat cleaver, it looks like new only darker. I am using the same procedures for mine.
In my experience wood just doesn't work in kitchens. We had a strip of cherry just around the edges, and over a few years the wood got so much abuse it looked terrible.
Rightfully so, everyone has been fairly negative on wooden countertops. One exception to this can be an island countertop that is not cut out for cooking or a sink. A thick countertop with a wonderful custom edge can really set off the warm aesthetics of the kitchen - particularly if it will only be used for eating. If it becomes a food prep area, then a nice granite or corian cutting board (either built it or mobile) is really critical.
This really augments a kitchen, at least in my mind, that is more functionally built for the daily hard work areas with granite, corian, or laminate countertops.
I was right there with you till you got to the granite cutting board. Too hard on knives. If you want to mix wood and granite in the kitchen, I vote for granite counters and wooden cutting boards.
Uncle Dunc: Your are correct in pointing the err in my previous thread wrt granite not being a good choice for cutting. Corian or wood are much more appropriate.
When considering wood (or any other porous countertop material) be sure to consider sanitation: there are some real ugly bugs (read: bacteria) out there which, unless you use some sort of chemical sterilizing agent to clean, can hang out in the pores of the material. Sure, all materials are porous to some degree, but to get wood to the point where I would consider it safe you would need to seriously plasticize it...which I think destroys the comforting feel of wood (I don't do much lacquering, obviously!)
My understanding of wood is that it is a better (i.e. more hygeinic) cutting surface than any artificial material as the mostly commonly used cutting board materials (i.e. beech, maple, sycamore, etc) contain natural anti-bacterial agents. We've seen big shifts over the last 20 or so years with a move away from wood to plastic chopping boards and now back to wood again because it is likely to remain more sterile (in catering environments)..... This has been backed-up by a number of long term studies undertaken by various public health bodies.
As to the requirement for everything to be sterile, I have serious reservations. A friend of mine has to be one of the healthiest guys I know - over the past 8 years he's had a cold just twice. In our British climate, doing a job where he is in contact with many other people, that takes some doing. So what does he do that gives him such a good immune system? He repairs and rebuilds road sweepers, a job where you cannot have a sanitised environment. Put yourself in a perfectly clean environment and you'll end up having to live life like the "Boy in the Bubble". Perhaps one of the medicos in the group would care to comment....
Scrit
I stand (sit) corrected! We use wood cutting borads in our household, and I do favor washing them with soap and hot water after each use. Especially when cutting up poultry, which can be contaminated based on current US food processing techniques.
Hi
The advice I've had from a friend who runs a cafe is that I should have two (or more) cutting boards - one for meat, the other for veg. It was he who told me about the back and forth shifts we've had over the years between wood and plastics.
Scrit
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