Copper Countertops

To appreciate the evolution of my kitchen, you need to see what we started with. This is a picture from the actual listing, dishes drying on the counters and all....the 70's called and they wanted their kitchen back! We gutted the entire kitchen, except for the island (but we did remove the counters and stove top). Walls were taken down, cabinets went away - pretty much a complete gut.

This is what the next few years looked like. The kitchen was mostly done - we had rerun the water lines, put in new bottom cabinets, created a peninsula with 4x4's, 2x4's and 1x4 slats, resurfaced the island with a homemade butcher block, made open shelving and put in a new sink. But we could not decide on the countertops and we did not have the money to do them anyway. My brother had some old laminate tops that you can see to the right of the sink. To the left of the sink and on the peninsula, we laid down plywood and then I covered it with oil cloth. I changed the oil cloth out every six months or so and it kept things interesting! When we got closer to being ready to put our new countertops in, we removed the laminate ones, changed the cabinets around to put the dishwasher on the other side of the sink and install plywood on top of everything. At this point, my husband to very precise measurements of where we wanted the countertops and then measured again! We gave these measurements, along with a rough sketch to a local company that does metal fabrication.

The copper came in three sections due to the constraints of how wide the rolls come in. It was protected by this film that you can see being peeled off. This was the smallest section and one of the ends so we thought it was the best one to start with.

We decided to use contact cement to adhere the copper to the plywood. Here, you can see that the plywood has been prepped with it and my husband is getting it on the back side of the copper.

At this point we have all the copper installed and are weighing it down with whatever we could get our hands on! Good thing I had gone to Costco that day! The seams fit together very tightly and we kept them away from the sink area.

Here, my hubby is cutting out the hole for the sink. When we decided to go with copper, instead of stainless steel (it was only about $200 more), we realized we would need a new sink as well since our current one was stainless steel! I was able to sell it on FB Marketplace and put the money towards our new sink!

It was totally worth it! I love this new sink!

Copper Countertops installed! My husband used decorative nailhead tacks to trim out the peninsula and it was such a wonderful way to finish that section off.

We love our new countertops and they have already begun to patina! Copper is also anti-bacterial surface and with six kids, that is a great side benefit! A little hard work, patience in the waiting and a willingness to do it ourselves leaves us with a kitchen we enjoy and that works hard for us!