DIY Faux Butcher Block Countertop: Budget-Friendly Makeover

Ooooohhhh shit you guys, we’re finally getting somewhere! Every time I walk by this laundry/pantry room I get a little bit more obsessed with it, and I know that once we get done it’s going to look so much better than every other room that we’ll be wanting to rush through to the next project. And this faux butcher block countertop is a BIG reason why.

Is anyone else like that? Just wanting to do all the projects, All. The. Time. despite, ya know, not having enough money or time or energy to keep up that momentum?

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Reveal |

Anyway, this week was a big one in laundry/pantry makeover, where we got the fridge moved in, cabinets painted, hardware attached to the cabinets and installed our faux butcher block countertop.

The color we used on the cabinets is called Cavalry by PPG in Satin and we love it. It’s a little bit of a brighter blue than the very dark navy we used on our dining bench because the pantry is so dark we thought the dining bench paint might just look black in there.

We got the hardware from Home Depot (here’s the round and the pulls, and installed these faux sconce lights (tutorial to come on how we did that without wiring, but here’s the link to them) above the open shelves.

We knew we wanted some kind of wood countertop in the pantry part because we wanted it to match the shelves and we didn’t want to spend a lottttt of money on granite or even laminate. We priced out butcher block countertop from the main hardware stores and for the 8 feet we’d need (not including the little end pieces around the corners), we were looking at more than $200.

Instead, we bought two sheets of 4’ x 8’ plywood from Lowe’s and had the store cut them a little bit more than in half, leaving us with two sheets of 25” x 8’ and two sheets of 23” x 8’.

The sheets are about $35 each so obviously we could’ve saved a lot of money had we just cut the one sheet in half and used that instead of two, but we still needed those couple of corner pieces and I’m using the leftover plywood for a cabinet above the washer and dryer so I consider it a win-win.

So, let’s break out the steps on how to fake a butcher block countertop:

Tools & Materials

• Sander
• Wood glue
• Clamps
• Stain – we used a mix of Early American and Weathered Oak
• Polycrylic
• Edge banding at 1.5” thick
• Iron (just your regular old home iron is fine, we know you aren’t using it much in quarantine anyway)
• Box cutter/utility knife

Sand and stain plywood

We sanded and stained what would be the top sheet of the main stretch of plywood, then glued and clamped it on top of the second long sheet of plywood and left it overnight.

Two notes: There’s no need to stain the front or side edges of the plywood, just the very top surface, and secondly, use a lot of wood glue and just go full IHOP syrup up on that thing.

When it’s all dry, give it a couple of good coats of polycrylic to seal the countertop and make sure it’s easy to clean.

Bring in the countertop and secure it down

The width of our room is exactly 8’, so it took a bit of wiggling and shuffling to get it into place since we had to keep the massive and heavy boards perfectly straight or it’d catch and make us want to play in the street.

Because we bought the really rough plywood, it was kind of bowed and when we put it in place it stuck up quite a bit at the edges. So, we put a couple of construction screws from the top down into the cabinets in the very back corners – they’re hardly noticeable, but I might wood fill it and touch up the stain if it bothers us. Other than that, we just wood glued down the countertop into place.

Cut down your edge banding

This stuff is MAGIC. It’s truly my new favorite product and I’m already thinking of how I can use it for my next project.

It’s basically a very thin veneer with dried glue on the back that you iron onto your surface.

The one I bought is 1.5” thick, which is a teeny bit thicker than our plywood sandwich, but it’s easily trimmed with a box cutter or edge trimmer.

First, hold up your edge banding along the countertop and cut the piece down to the length you’ll need with the box cutter. If you kind of score the top of the banding, it’ll snap off really clean.

Iron the edge banding down

Next, line up the edge banding with the top of your countertop and hold your hot iron over it for a few seconds. Keep moving along the surface, lining up the edge banding with the top and holding the iron over it for a few seconds so the glue behind melts.

Once you’ve done a quick pass over the whole thing so the glue is tacky, do another round with the iron holding it over each spot for a bit longer. Pay close attention to any bubbles, because I had a couple I needed to fix.

Grab a scrap piece of wood and rub the whole surface with it to make sure each part is nice and stuck down, then wait for it to cool down and the glue to harden.

Stain the edge banding

The next step is as easy as staining the edge banding to match your countertop. I did a layer of Weathered Oak, a layer of Early American, then a layer of Weathered Oak again.

And that’s it! You’ve figured out how to make a faux a butcher block countertop and have probably spent between $50 and $100 instead of several hundreds for your project. I’m not sure I’d use this method in our kitchen, but in something like a pantry, bar cart, buffet, coffee table, camper, etc. it’s the perfect budget solution.

In the next two weeks, we’ll:

• Build and install the upper laundry cabinet
• Install washer/dryer shelf
• Close off other pantry door
• Build cleaning/utility cabinet
• Paint the room
• Stencil paint the floors

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