Craft Desk Build - Counter Top

For the counter top I decided to go with an aged oak stain color with some light distressing.  It helped tremendously on the cost by using some raw oak that I had bought over 10 years ago for some projects I had building our last house.  I still had a ton of 1x4 and 1x6 rough sawn oak.  It took some work to plane down and glue together but it came out great!

I started out with 3/4 plywood base for the countertop

I left a gap on the lip of the perimeter to allow for an oak strip to be installed for finishing off the edge

I cut my pattern in the corner where the chair would go.

Some of the rough sawn oak brought inside to acclimate to the house

My handy Dewalt planer up to the task

Dryfitting the newly planed and edged boards

Made a Herringbone pattern in the corner

More dry fitting of the boards

Gluing the top

Top was glued in sections.  Had to be careful that it wasn't bowing while clamped.

Top sections in place but not yet permanently.  This was just to glue in the bottom oak strip for the edging.

Speaking of edging, this is the router bit used.  A cove roundover.

Made a heckuva nice edge.

Top getting insatlled

Edges look good!

Now the hard part.  Routing the curved section.  Had to do that after counter was installed so this section was routed in the room.  Made quite a mess!

But it came out pretty good!

My nice new top and what was the next step?  Distressing!

I used a blow torch to burn some dark blotches to emulate years of stains in the wood

I used a chisel to gouge in some scratches, a homemade tool to make work holes and a bolt for some other distressed marks.

That oak wook sure had a worm problem!

Here is the deadly tool I made to make my worm holes!  

All stained up and sealed!