Coffee Bar – Temporary Countertop

We will be living with the coffee bar without doors for a few months untill the budget will allow us to pruchase all the door and drawer fittings.  The DIY concrete countertop will have to wait until spring (when its warm enough to pour in our unheated garage) but in the interim we still wanted to get some use out of our new cabinets.  So we decided to make a temporary countertop using some inexpensive $20 shelving we found at Home Depot. It is finger jointed pine which looks a lot like butcher block. It’s 3/4″ thick and came in a 8′ length and 16″ wide. It was wide and long enough to fit the bill, and we figured we could finish it up to be a passable temporary butcher block countertop for our coffee bar untill project Concrete Countertops can happen.

We cut to length, sanded, and got to finishing it. We decided to give it a couple of coats of tung oil (same as our dining table) and call it a day.

photo 1

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Not bad for a $20 counter top eh?

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:

Pine Shelf – Home Depot (note we used the #2 grade, you can also get a #1 grade version for $46)
Tung Oil – Lee Valley Tools

Tools Used:

Circular Saw, Tape Measure, Sand Paper

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

One out of five

Total Cost: $20

Author: Kristen

Kristen & her husband El Granto & their Vizsla Odin live in a converted Storefront in downtown Toronto.

2 thoughts on “Coffee Bar – Temporary Countertop”

  1. Hello! Love the project. Thank you for sharing. Can you tell me where did you find the cabinets? I am starting a business and renting a place, this seems a good solution for a temporary kitchen countertop. I’d love to do this project there. Did you get them at home depot as well? Thank you very much! Lori

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