With an impending kitchen remodel (on insurance's dime, largely) we are heavily leaning towards a walnut butch block for the counters.

My wife likes the appearance, as do I. We like the dark color of walnut over maple or birch. I prefer the feel and warmth of wood over stone or stone like products. I prefer the deadness of the wood (from a sound perspective)... it just seems more subtle.

I know there is much more maintenance involved... I'd like to hear about that from people who have had it. We already extensively use wooden (or bamboo) cutting boards, so I'm used to oiling as upkeep on small scales.

Thoughts?

Now it will be oiling on a grand scale. If you keep alot of stuff on the counters as my wife does, having to move it all on a regular basis is a pain. The counters usually get tended to in thirds, one to work on, one being oiled and one to store stuff on. Areas around the sink are very heavy maintenance due to soapy water going astray. If you have very different humidity from summer to winter, you may get some splitting or cracking. They are easier to sand out minor boo-boos.

They are cool for a center island but there is upkeep. I would stick with stone on counters.

I put them in a kitchen in my condo in 2010.

Used Maple butcherblock from Lumber Liquidators. The kitchen cabinets were IKEA which worked out great but their butcherblock countertops didn’t seem like high quality and were lots of tiny strips. The LL stuff was a much better quality and more choice of woods. I loved the look of the lighter maple with the white cabinets, it just looked timeless and classic.

I’ve looked at lots of pictures of various butcherblock countertops and have concluded that the lighter stuff like oak and maple just look better than the darker stuff but that’s just my taste and opinion.

Are you having this done professionally or DIYing it? Cutting clean and straight where ever it joins is very critical. Miter joints where it makes an “L” look nicer but you’ll need more countertop material. I just chose to do butt joints, my cousin who is a contractor helped me out with these.

You’ll also need to use special hardware to attach to base cabinets and wherever two pieces join called miter bolts.

As far as upkeep, all I ever used was plain old mineral oil, you can buy “butcherblock oil” but it’s just mineral oil for 10 times the price. After the initial installation, I sanded them down really well until nice and smooth, and then I applied a thick coating of this and let it soak in for a day and then added another thick coating and let that soak in and then buffed it out.

Then after that I did an oiling like once a year. The beauty of this stuff is that scrapes and scratches can be sanded out and oiled and they go away. You DO have to watch that staining items like red wine or tomato sauce etc get wiped up quickly or they can be an issue.

We did a gut renovation of our current homes kitchen in 2022 and I really wanted to go with the maple butcherblock again but got overruled by the wife and we ended up getting white quartz which is beautiful but cold and unforgiving compared to wood.

Here’s a pic of the kitchen, it’s small but I did 90% of the entire thing myself as a learning experience and it was a 1000% improvement over the dated 80’s kitchen that it replaced. I chose to go with a farmhouse/apron style sink rather than an under-mount as I wasn’t sure how wood would fare around a sink like that:

I don't have wooden counters but I do make a lot of cutting boards. If you won't be using it as a cutting board you can varnish or polyurethane it. For ease of maintenance it's worth it to use a separate board for food prep. Not bamboo though, it's grass and epoxy and it hard on your knives.

Looks good but absolutely no way I would have them . They are not forgiving of the eventual screw ups .

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
Looks good but absolutely no way I would have them . They are not forgiving of the eventual screw ups .

How so?

How is laminate or quartz or anything else more forgiving than something you can sand down and remove scrapes and stains and burns from?

I did a kitchen remodel with IKEA using their butcher block counters. It was the least expensive remodel I could find. My wife oils the countertops a couple times a year, no other upkeep. I have no regrets and I like the look of the wood. Not sure what people think can go wrong, keep them oiled and it looks fine. Eventually I may sand them if they get too worn but that will be years from now. I would guess I have had them about 7-8 years now.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
Looks good but absolutely no way I would have them . They are not forgiving of the eventual screw ups .

How so?

How is laminate or quartz or anything else more forgiving than something you can sand down and remove scrapes and stains and burns from?

More forgiving ? Everything is more forgiving than wood . If you want to sand and oil and hope that nobody does anything really stupid then have at it .

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
Looks good but absolutely no way I would have them . They are not forgiving of the eventual screw ups .

How so?

How is laminate or quartz or anything else more forgiving than something you can sand down and remove scrapes and stains and burns from?

More forgiving ? Everything is more forgiving than wood . If you want to sand and oil and hope that nobody does anything really stupid then have at it .

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
Looks good but absolutely no way I would have them . They are not forgiving of the eventual screw ups .

How so?

How is laminate or quartz or anything else more forgiving than something you can sand down and remove scrapes and stains and burns from?

More forgiving ? Everything is more forgiving than wood . If you want to sand and oil and hope that nobody does anything really stupid then have at it .

What the heck are you doing with your counters that you need to sand them? What kinds of stupid stuff goes on in your house? Mine look fine and I have not sanded them, I like knowing I can if needed.

After I rented out my condo, we stipulated in the lease several times: DO NOT CUT ON THE COUNTERTOPS, USE A CUTTING BOARD.

The two girls we rented the place to for the first year chose to ignore this and cut on them in several spots and left obvious cut marks.

After they cleared out, I went in there with some medium and fine sandpaper, sanded out the cut marks then re-oiled and they were as good as new.

The girls lost $100 of their security deposit as a result.

THAT is the beauty of butcherblock counters. There’s no other counter material you can do this to.