The Laundry Room's Plank Style Counters

It's been a few weeks since we checked in with the laundry room. Our small, but mighty, sink that we ordered to fit into that 15" wide base cabinet was on backorder and it finally got here last week! We celebrated because this was the last thing we needed to wrap up this laundry room.

Once the sink got here, we unwrapped our countertops that arrived awhile ago and got excited all over again. In our last home's kitchen remodel (that we finished just days before unexpectedly moving--days!) we installed really beautiful Black Walnut Edge Style countertops we got from Craft Art (you can read all about that here). They have DIY products that aren't completely finished, but as long as you can sand and apply a few coats of sealer, it cuts down on price.

For the few weeks we were able to use those countertops, we were absolutely in love. They were warm and smooth and had loads of character. And they were gone out of our lives too soon. We knew we really wanted to use a rich, wood countertop in the laundry room--with all that white and stainless, the room was calling for something organic and warm. We checked back in with Craft Art, and were originally set on using the same exact Black Walnut Edge style countertop, but then I noticed they had a "plank style" in the same species. I looked at a few photos and loved the thicker planks that felt less busy and showed some truly lovely grain. And it was surprisingly cheaper than the edge grain--sold. We ordered a DIY countertop and backsplash that will fill the space from the counter all the way up to the bottom of the cabinets--a few of you have asked, why the wall wasn't finished back there. It will be covered with pretty wood soon enough!

This is when we initially unboxed it. I apologize the rest of these photos are with my phone, with all the dust flying around, I didn't want to risk destroying our nice camera during this dirty work. The counter and backsplash came with one or two coats of Waterlox on it, but we'll get into the sealing process in a later post. Our first, and scariest task was cutting out the hole for the sink. The sink, an undermount, came with a nice solid template (are paper templates the worst or what), that we traced and got to it with our jig saw.

After the hole was cut, we took turns sanding, with increasingly higher grit sandpaper, until the freshly cut wood felt smooth.

This is when we realized, we probably should have drilled the faucet hole while we cut the sink so we could have knocked out all that sanding at once. Faucet hole coming! Install coming! Sealant coming! But isn't she a beaut? I couldn't wait one more day to share it with you. I'll be sure to break out the real camera this weekend and have photos of it installed in the laundry room next week!