{"id":14121,"date":"2019-01-24T23:46:04","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T07:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=14121"},"modified":"2019-01-24T23:53:57","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T07:53:57","slug":"a-shiny-black-countertop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=14121","title":{"rendered":"A shiny black countertop"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my real life kitchen<\/a>, I picked out the countertop first and then spent a crazy amount of time finding backsplash tiles that would go well with it. I ended up with tiles in the same color family as the countertop, but a few shades lighter. <\/p>\n

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I wanted to do something similar in the Victorianna so I started by painting a green stone-like countertop, using the dry brush technique I’ve used in other<\/a> kitchens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Short version: it looked bad! The backsplash<\/a> is busy and I didn’t have the right shades of green to paint something that looked good against it. I didn’t even take a picture. I covered up the green with a watery coat of Bleached Linen (the same paint I’m using for the cabinets) and put it aside for another day.<\/p>\n

I looked online at pictures of white kitchens with green backsplashes and saw a lot of black countertops. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to try black, but why not? The nice thing about paint is you can cover it up. (And I usually have to a few times before I get a countertop right!)<\/p>\n

For years I had a little bottle of black craft paint that came out nice and dark on the first coat. When that ran out last year I bought a bottle of Craft Smart paint that’s much more watery. It always takes several coats for full coverage. The middle piece in the picture below is after one coat of black — I didn’t like the brush strokes. So I tried sponging it on with a sponge brush instead. That plus the white base coat came out looking stone-like, as you can see in the piece on the right.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After sponging on one coat of black, I let the pieces dry and then sponged on another coat of black. Here’s the result.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I sanded the painted pieces with very fine sandpaper, then used gloss varnish to add shine. This is water based varnish that comes in the same little bottles as craft paint. I love matte varnish for giving things a stone look, but in the past I haven’t been happy with the gloss varnish because of the brush lines. This time I had an epiphany — if you use enough varnish, the brush lines disappear! I really glopped it on, and then let it dry overnight. Nice and shiny!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This isn’t perfect for a countertop. It has a sort of crackle texture, plus some little bumps where there were bubbles in the varnish. There are surely better ways to get a smooth, shiny finish. But since my cabinets are far back in the room, and the room is pretty dark, you don’t really see the flaws.<\/p>\n

Next I glued on the countertops. To do this I put the glue on the cabinets, then put the cabinets in place and slid the countertops in place on top of them. Since everything is such a tight fit, this ensured I positioned the countertops exactly right.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In between steps on the countertops, I finished painting the cabinets and added all the knobs. The cabinets were a perfect fit when they were raw but the paint added some depth, so I had to do a bit of sanding to get everything to fit again. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ta da!<\/p>\n


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All I have left to do in here is the backsplash over the sink and add trim. The window sill overlaps the sink backsplash so it’s a little complicated, but I have a plan. Oh, and I still have add a clock to the microwave, and to paint the stove. I’m dreading painting the stove so I’ve been putting it off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my real life kitchen, I picked out the countertop first and then spent a crazy amount of time finding backsplash tiles that would go well with it. I ended up with tiles in the same color family as the countertop, but a few shades lighter. I wanted to do something similar in the Victorianna […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[58,19,39],"class_list":["post-14121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dollhouses","tag-greenleaf-victorianna","tag-half-scale","tag-kitchen","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14121"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14137,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14121\/revisions\/14137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}