Many people are surprised to hear that our beautiful wood counters are actually from IKEA. Here’s an update on how our IKEA wood counters are holding up three years after we installed them.
One of the best decisions we’ve made in our home’s renovations so far has been installing IKEA wood counters in our kitchen. Our kitchen is the first room that guests walk into (other than the mudroom) and we get so many compliments on the counters. People are seriously just drawn to them. I get quite a few questions about maintaining our counters and about how they’ve held up for us since we installed them three years ago, so I thought it would be good to give you a close up view today to show you just what they look like after several years of wear and tear.
Maintenance on IKEA Wood Counters
First of all, I have to say that while you can sand your counters down and refinish them if you ever need to, we haven’t yet, and I really don’t plan on it now that I’ve seen how they wear. We follow a really simple regular re-oiling routine, and that seems to be enough for us to keep them looking presentable.
Is it OK to get IKEA Wood Counters Wet?
The main concern that people have when they’re considering wood counters is whether or not they’ll be able to stand up to normal use in their kitchen, which of course involves lots of water. Of course no one wants to permanently damage their new counters, or end up with water spots that are hard to get rid of after every meal.
We really haven’t been careful at all about keeping water away from our counters and we use them in much the same way as you would use laminate or stone counters without giving it a second thought and we haven’t had a single issue with water spots. We do have some visible wear close to the sink when we go a few weeks without oiling our counters, but I think that’s mostly because of dishes being piled there regularly, and no because of the water.
Do We Cut Directly on Our IKEA Wood Counters?
While it would be fine to cut directly on your IKEA wood counters and use them like a traditional butcher block surface, we still usually use a cutting board. If you cut directly on your wood counters, you will definitely make a mark, and while I actually kind of like that chef’s kitchen look, I don’t want to risk the counters getting too worn out for my tastes. I just like a clean-looking kitchen. 🙂 We still have the odd mark here and there from a knife slipping, or if we were just cutting something quickly on a paper towel and went too far so we kind of get the best of both worlds.
Do We Have Marks on Our IKEA Wood Counters?
Definitely. Like I said, we try to keep our counters from getting too marked up, but they’re wood, so we get scratches and dings. The first few are really painful to watch happen, but as the wear and tear increases and the marks even out, the counters get kind of a really nice patina to them. The oiling that we do really helps to darken scratches and scrapes and makes them much less visible overall.
Here you can see how our counters look with three years of wear and tear. We took these photos after not oiling the counters for about a month so this is the counters at their worst. This is about as bad-looking as they get.
Here you can see how they look after we’ve given them a quick oiling.
You can see that those marks have all pretty much disappeared and the counters look pretty great, like a beautiful old piece of antique furniture.
We try to do this process once a week or so because it makes such a difference in how the counters look and it really only takes about 2 minutes.
So as you can see, we still love our IKEA wood counters. They’re definitely not in perfect condition, but the great thing is that with counters like these, it doesn’t really matter!
Let me know what other questions you have about our wood counters! I’d be happy to answer them and make your decision a little easier if you’re considering wood counters for your kitchen!
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.