HOME CHRONICLES: Kitchen Remodel Part 1: Bowling Lane Counter Tops

Hey guys, this whole house renovation has been a thrill. We have learned so much. My husband is becoming quite the handy man! The very first day we got the house we went over and started demo day 1. The first room we started on was the kitchen. The kitchen was old and outdated. Tan hexagon tiles on the counter tops. Tan square tiles as the backsplash. Big rugs that were stapled down as carpet, and under the rugs there was sticky green vinyl. None of the cabinet doors were on. Let me show you guys some pictures, and I want to tell you guys what we did in here.

I knew exactly what I wanted our kitchen to look like. But it is way harder then you think it is to decide what will give you the look you want. I knew I wanted something very white and airy. It is hard because there are a billion different colors of white. Holy cow.

Overall before picture.
Hey guys, this whole house renovation has been a thrill. We have learned so much. My husband is becoming quite the handy man! The very first day we got the house we went over and started demo day 1. The first room we started on was the kitchen. The kitchen was old and outdated. Tan hexagon tiles on the counter tops. Tan square tiles as the backsplash. Big rugs that were stapled down as carpet, and under the rugs there was sticky green vinyl. None of the cabinet doors were on. Let me show you guys some pictures, and I want to tell you guys what we did in here.

I knew exactly what I wanted our kitchen to look like. But it is way harder then you think it is to decide what will give you the look you want. I knew I wanted something very white and airy. It is hard because there are a billion different colors of white. Holy cow. But once everything was in and put together I loved how everything turned out. I think my favorite part about renovating a house is watching my ideas come to life.

This is the before of the hexagon tile on the countertops and the brown squares for the backsplash.

Here's during. This stuff had to go. So we just started hammering away at it.

Once we got past the hexagon tile we found about a 2 inch slab of concrete with chicken wire in it that had also been stapled to the counter. That stuff was a pain to break up and get off of the countertop. The best way I found to do it was to grab a big sledge hammer and break up the concrete and then take the crow bar and hammer it under the chicken wire and then push it up off of the counter with it. Once I figured out the best way to get this stuff off it went pretty quickly, but it took me awhile to figure it out so this took about 12 hours, I worked on it two different days for 6 hours. my hubby Shane and our friend Mike who has been helping us (although we call him our contractor) helped me get this stuff off but they had other things going on so they didn't get to help me very much. So I am pretty proud of myself.

This cleared off countertop is a beautiful sight to me. The rugs on the kitchen floor actually helped a bunch when it came to clean up. We just rolled the rug up with all of the tile and concrete and chicken wire on it.

Once the countertop was cleared off we had a hard time figuring out what we wanted to do for our new countertop. Originally I wanted butcher block because I love the way it looks with a big apron front farmsink. But then we started wanting granite. So we went to Amarillo to choose our granite and found the perfect piece of granite, it was love at first sight. We found out it would take too long to get the granite to our house. We needed it installed before the appraiser came to check the house out, and countertops are kind of important to have in. So then we thought we could make a really cool concrete countertop that looked like marble, but we weren't going to diy that and the guy really talented at it here in Booker was to busy for a job like that right now. So that kind of shut the door on concrete countertops. So we had a friend in our church tell us there was some bowling lane wood for sale on one of the buy sell trade pages on Facebook. It was funny because a couple months ago this friend of ours and I were talking about someone who had put a bowling lane in as a countertop. I thought that was the coolest idea! A great way to recycle and a great story to share, and besides, bowling is one of my favorite things to do so having a bowling lane in my house as my countertop would just be so cool! And in the beginning I wanted butcher block anyways so this worked out perfectly! So we hopped in Mike's truck (which he was gracious enough to let us use several times) and we went to pick up the bowling lane.

We picked out the piece that we wanted. We found one that was 15 feet long and $300.00. We thankfully only needed one piece. I think $300.00 for countertops is amazing. Granite or even concrete would have been way more expensive. Shane and Mike measured the wood and cut it out. They did an amazing job!

Once the countertop was cut out they went ahead and nailed it into the wood piece that was already on the counter. They nailed it from the bottom up. It looks pretty in the bottom picture but obviously we still have a ton of work to do in there.

To the front of the bowling lane we nailed a piece of knotty pine. Mike put the bullnose edge onto it. It really finished off the countertop. Mike then added two coats of polyurethane into it to make sure it is protected.

Here's a before picture of the left side of the kitchen. Yes those are LED light in our kitchen. They even flash in all deaf ferret colors . . . You can see all of the cabinets in the bottom right cabinet. They were gross, and in need of a good paint job.