Cara’s Office – Part 6

Today I am working on getting the layer of MDF that goes under the oak plywood countertops.  I don’t know if the pictures show the work space accurately or not, but I am actually very intimidated by this part of the project.  Our countertop is 23 feet long!!  This will be seen by everyone and needs to look good.  I used MDF for the under countertop part.  I rip them all to 24 inches wide and lay them out so I can start marking all of my cuts.

Now I get to cutting.

Now, don’t you get all jealous about my pink tool belt.  That was my mother’s day gift from my daughter!

Here I am doing a dry fit of the MDF before I drill it in.
Umm, yeah, instead of modeling my pink tool belt, I should have been paying more attention to my cuts.  I had some that were not exactly straight and I had to use a power sander to sand down the MDF to get them correct.

Now that all of the MDF substrate is in, I can start on the actual top that will be seen.

Unfortunately all of the lumber yards in my area only cater to the building industry and are only open 7-4 M-F, so I am unable to get around to them to see my choices of lumber.  Instead I went with the big box store and selected a cabinet grade oak plywood, and oak 1X2 for the facing.  Same as with the MDF, I rip the plywood into 24 inch width and use my Kreg Rip cut!

I also make all of my other markings and use the jigsaw for the smaller cuts.

Cutting wood is always fun!

Now that all of the pieces are cut, I use today to glue and nail down the top.

Now that the countertop is down, I move forward with adding the facing edge.

I use a router with a bit and give the facing a curved edge, since I will be working here every day.  I wasn’t too thrilled about having a sharp edge on my forearms all day.  The router worked like a charm!  I love the smooth round edge.

Next my husband sanded the top of the countertop, while I sanded the facing.  We used 220 grit to get a super smooth finish.

Here it is all ready to be stained.

I really wanted to use Sandra’s method of Waterlox tung oil, however there is no store within a 50 mile radius of us that sells it, therefore I am forced into stain and polyurethane.  To prep the wood, I wiped it down with papertowels and then I wiped it down once with mineral spirits.

Then the fun begins!  I selected an ebony stain.  Because this is oak and is a hard wood, I had to let the stain set for 15 minutes and then iwpe it down.  I repeated the process the next morning.

June 29^th

I applied the second coat of stain and then I went swimming and took a nap and enjoyed the rest of my weekend.  I can honestly say that I.LOVE.IT!!  My countertops turned out better than I could have hoped for.  I still need to put three coats of polyurethane on them, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Read all of Cara’s project update posts. And you can get the free plans for the Cara Collection office furniture built-ins.