A Simple, Temporary Counter
It's been at least a month since I did this, and since it hasn't fallen down yet, I guess it's time to blog about it!
I made a temporary counter to fill the odd space in my kitchen that's too narrow for a kitchen table (without bumping into the space the garage door needs to swing) and mysteriously cabinet- and counter-less.
You may have noticed it's an awfully fancy looking thing for a temporary counter.
I don't know how to do simple. Really.
I have, however, been absorbing all manner of folk art styles all my life, which manifested in this Polish/Russian/Ukrainian/Mexican design. I wasn't really planning for the counter to be a project worth writing about, so I didn't take any progress photos (also, I was busy painting). It's made from one of the plywood panels that served as part of my bed frame an iteration ago, cut down slightly and sanded a bit more assiduously, and painted over.
The original plan was to just make it white. And then I thought, well, maybe it could do with a little decorative motif in the middle, to make it less boring.
And then it was four hours later and my hands and elbows and cheeks were smeared indigo-purple and my knees were sore and my counter was glorious.
I was getting a bit bored of leaves and flowers, and wasn't sure how to modify my fairly linear central design to fill the negative space above and below the center anyway, so I added birds.
Everyone does it, if they don't add horses.
It's all eyeballed; there were a few mistakes I decided I couldn't live with, which I wiped off and then painted over, and I had to talk myself out of adding yet more detail with grey paint over the indigo, but I contained my enthusiasm.
I also used polyurethane that apparently isn't meant to go over white paint, so there's a slight agéd tone in person which I don't really mind. It's not a bad trade for better waterproofing.
The whole thing is installed with a truly insane number of drywall anchors helping to screw the scrap wood into the walls (and one cabinet side) to brace the counter from underneath. The counter intself just slides into place and is held by tension between the cabinets on one side and the wall on the other. I didn't bother to span the length or the width with braces, so it does bow a bit if you set two weeks' groceries in the center, and I wouldn't knead bread on it.
The point, though, was to have a prep surface and a space to eat at, and now that I've acquired tall chairs that kinda fit under it, it'll do very nicely for that.
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| Dramatic lighting thanks to our bizarrely dramatic weather this year. |
You may have noticed it's an awfully fancy looking thing for a temporary counter.
 |
| State-of-the-art sawhorse technology here. |
I have, however, been absorbing all manner of folk art styles all my life, which manifested in this Polish/Russian/Ukrainian/Mexican design. I wasn't really planning for the counter to be a project worth writing about, so I didn't take any progress photos (also, I was busy painting). It's made from one of the plywood panels that served as part of my bed frame an iteration ago, cut down slightly and sanded a bit more assiduously, and painted over.
The original plan was to just make it white. And then I thought, well, maybe it could do with a little decorative motif in the middle, to make it less boring.
And then it was four hours later and my hands and elbows and cheeks were smeared indigo-purple and my knees were sore and my counter was glorious.
 |
| The Firebird... |
 |
| ...and the Rooster. |
It's all eyeballed; there were a few mistakes I decided I couldn't live with, which I wiped off and then painted over, and I had to talk myself out of adding yet more detail with grey paint over the indigo, but I contained my enthusiasm.
I also used polyurethane that apparently isn't meant to go over white paint, so there's a slight agéd tone in person which I don't really mind. It's not a bad trade for better waterproofing.
The whole thing is installed with a truly insane number of drywall anchors helping to screw the scrap wood into the walls (and one cabinet side) to brace the counter from underneath. The counter intself just slides into place and is held by tension between the cabinets on one side and the wall on the other. I didn't bother to span the length or the width with braces, so it does bow a bit if you set two weeks' groceries in the center, and I wouldn't knead bread on it.
The point, though, was to have a prep surface and a space to eat at, and now that I've acquired tall chairs that kinda fit under it, it'll do very nicely for that.
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