wood counter tops

[Rob Charles]

The lumber liquidators & similar butcher counter tops slabs are relatively cost effective & easy/cheap to swap out if needed. I have had good luck with Behlen's salad bowl finish. Easy to use but requires occasional scraping & reapplications. Compared to the expense of solid & stone surfaces, your friend could install several wood counter tops & still be money ahead. Short term/AirBnB renters will certainly eventually harm any counter top your friend will install. It is the nature of way too many STR/VR renters. AirBnB does not have a good reputation in backing the property owner in damage claim situations. Goos luck on the project which ever way you al go.

[Ron Citerone]

IMO, as much as I love wood, I think other counter top choices make more sense. I really think there are other options that don't compromise the Cottage/cabin style.

In my modest Bay cottage, my wife and kids always say while I am remodeling, less wood.

There are so many ways to incorporate wood into a cabin besides counter tops.

My 2 pennies..........worth what your paid, LOL

[Lee Schierer]

The problem with wood countertops in a rental is that visitors will use the countertop as a cutting board and it will get scarred up when people chop or cut food on it.

[julian abram]

This is a 7/4 cherry island countertop I built for our kitchen remodel 2 years ago. Finished with several coats of Waterlox on both top and bottom. It still looks great, shows almost no wear. Not sure about wood tops in a Airbnb, better chance for abuse. About $400 in materials as I recall.

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[Mel Fulks]

That finish product must be quite something , as you obviously have been unable to remove those drip rings from that
black marble !! Oh well....
Beautiful grain and color. Well done!

[Michael A. Tyree]

Waterlox question on waterproof- It is a great varnish but not waterproof as is a spar varnish to some degree. I have it on my wide board oak floors and it's my favorite all time varnish but still not waterproof. Wife uses Orange Glo on it and looks like the day I put it on in 2005. It alos is a VG finish for Wormy chestnut as it darkens in a way that brings out the woods best face.
A wooden counter in a rental is flat out asking for trouble! People don't respect such things enough that it will haunt you for choosing it. Even if it's not rented maintenance comes as part of the reality.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I did one from ash last winter, my customer really wanted what you see, I really suggested granite. She won, so 7 coats of satin Cabot water based poly (the best poly I've found), and she got this slab. It's holding up spectacularly, and she loves it. The completed pic is hiding from me, but you can see the finished wood better in this anyhow. I would do it again for a careful customer.


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[Ellen Benkin]

I agree with several earlier posts. Based on my experience with renters -- longer stays than B&B -- I would NEVER give them a chance to ruin a countertop with either water or knives. It's not theirs and they don't know or care to take care of it. Better to be safe or expect to "renew" it frequently.

Ellen

[mark mcfarlane]

The problem with wood countertops in a rental is that visitors will use the countertop as a cutting board and it will get scarred up when people chop or cut food on it.

+1. I believe wood countertops will get cut on and destroyed in a rental, regardless of the nightly price.

If it has to be wood, I'd look at Grizzly's maple butcher block bench tops. I have heavily used one for 3 years, no cracks or splits but I have planed/sanded it once. It dings, as any workbench top will, but its pretty darn hard. You'll probably want to scratch sand and add a thicker film finish.

Grizzly had the best price on pre-fab maple counter tops when I looked 3 years ago.

[Günter VögelBerg]

So this is what I am wondering...who puts their food directly on the counter to cut it? Do people think this is sanitary? It has never occured to me that this is a thing people do.

[Gustav Gabor]

Sadly, many see a wooden counter top as just a large cutting board, and use it as such. The nice, new look will be hacked up in no-time in a rental.

So this is what I am wondering...who puts their food directly on the counter to cut it? Do people think this is sanitary? It has never occured to me that this is a thing people do.

[mark mcfarlane]

So this is what I am wondering...who puts their food directly on the counter to cut it? Do people think this is sanitary? It has never occured to me that this is a thing people do.

The other likely risk is somewhat placing a hot pot on the wood countertop. People do crazy things, sometimes without thinking, sometimes people (like me) just space out and do something stupid.

[David Zaret]

in our house, we have a number of rooms with countertops - the laundry room has 8/4 walnut, and upstairs on a few "wet bars" we have 8/4 sapele. all three have under mount sinks. the kitchen has quartzite. for these "auxiliary" rooms/counters, wood is perfect - the walnut is finished with seal-a-cell and arm-r-seal, and the sapele is finished with waterlox original. both are absolutely beautiful, functional, and perfectly suitable for non-kitchen-related work.

if this house was meant to be rented, i probably wouldn't use wood on any horizontal surface. we don't baby our counters, but people are uncaring idiots.

i also wouldn't use a non-site-repairable film finish on a wood counter. the arm-r-seal and waterlox can be easily re-applied onsite.

one final thing - in the case of under mount sinks in wood counters, you expose a lot of end grain that has obvious potential to get wet. what i do is soak that end grain with epoxy, and then go through the normal sanding/finishing process. the epoxy stabilizes and locks the end grain so that no fluids can soak in.

here's a shot of part of the walnut top, with my funky backsplash:

walnut countertop

[Prashun Patel]

That walnut countertop and backsplash are so whimsical. Would love to see the rest of the room!

[Jim Becker]

So this is what I am wondering...who puts their food directly on the counter to cut it? Do people think this is sanitary? It has never occured to me that this is a thing people do.

Do not underestimate the ability of humans to do things that might not be good choices, especially when the end result doesn't affect something they own themselves. Even in our own home, it took a lot of coaching to get my daughters, especially the older, to understand that the island top isn't a cutting board, despite looking like one. In rental properties, regardless if they are long term or short term, people are going to do what people do and a rental owner has to keep that up-front in their thinking to mitigate maintenance and repair costs over time. In this case, continual abuse could actually make the property less desirable as a rental as a knackered-up counter could be off-putting.