Kitchen Counters

I've had quite a few different ideas of what I wanted to do to fix our counters. I sort of love butcher block and wanted to go that route for a long time. Ikea has a pretty great price for butcher block, but our counter has a weird section that made it so their's wouldn't be wide enough in just one spot. Plus, I was hoping for a little bit cheaper...

Then I came across this post about Ardex concrete. And I was super excited about it! I thought concrete would look great and this seemed cheap as well. As I started looking into it, there was only one store that sells this and its about half an hour away from me and is open only a few days a week and at odd times...hmmm, okay I still think I can make it work...right?

Then I researched it some more and saw more reviews on it and while I still think it could be great, it seemed to be a LOT of work, and a LOT of mess and maybe not as cheap as I was thinking.

SOOOOoooooooo, then I saw this post about spray painting your counters. And I decided this was the way to go.

Overall, this cost me maybe $50 for entirely "new" countertops. Do they look like concrete? Maybe in pictures but in real life it looks like we just got new formica or laminate tops. Which I'm okay with. :)

Also, because I had control over this, I did one side of our kitchen at a time. That meant that my entire kitchen didn't have to be a complete disaster zone and out of commission. Which was good because my family likes to eat ya know??

Anyway, on to the pictures! This is what it started out like:

                                               crappy yellow-y tan counters from the 80's...

                      ...and it was NOT me. It was the old owners, I feel bad things towards them.

                                                                    also NOT from me.

Here's the materials I used- only the one can of primer, and I ended up using about four cans of the stone texture spray paint:

I sanded it down really quickly (I wasn't too worried about it since it was old and a lot of the shine had worn off already) and then taped everything off.

Here's what it looked like before I started spraying, I wanted to be sure the overspray from the spray paint wouldn't get everywhere.

This is after the primer went on, its still wet here. I only did one coat and wasn't worried about it being even or consistent.

This is after one coat of the textured spray paint:

After I got it all spray painted and evenly coated, I started on with the polyurethane. I read to use a water based one, because it won't yellow over time. I did like eight coats of this, you have to wait two hours between coats, so it took me about two days to do this. Nice thin even coats, not too hard just have to wait in between. I made everyone stay away from it and not use it hardly at all for about a week. My husband was not happy about this...he kept saying "WHATS THE POINT OF HAVING COUNTERS IF WE CAN'T USE THEM??" He's a little dramatic.

Here's the other side all finished:

I love the texture that the stone spray paint brings, and the poly really makes it look like nicer laminate.
hint: Do you see my new SINK?!? Its MINT!! I will do a post on that next! Yay!

Linking up at Tatertots and Jello

So I just wanted to give a little update/tip things: I had a friend who wanted to do this and we ran into a few snags. She was trying to get it done really quickly before she left on a trip (so then they would be off the counters the time they were gone), so we were rushing a bit. When we went to put our first coat of poly on it started streaking in spots because the stone spray paint wasn't completely dry. So PLEASE make sure its dried all the way. Also, if you don't have time and need to rush--don't do this project. :) So, I guess the only other tip I have is that you need to be a careful painter. If you have no experience with spray paint, practice on something else. You have to know how to evenly spray and not get drips and too heavy in spots. If you don't feel confident in your spray painting skills--ask someone else to spray for you okay? And just make sure you really make the poly coats thin and even. Hope that covers it, if you have any questions please ask in the comments! I'm happy to answer anything you might think of. :)