Roo's Pink House: Painted Countertops

After three years of ugly white countertops I took matters into my own hands and decided to paint them. Brent was a little nervous to say the least but I just couldn't take them any longer and new countertops where out of the question.

I primed them with a cheap ($14) all purpose primmer from Lowes. I also had them tint it a nice neutral color, but wish I'd gone darker with my primer choice, something I learned later.

I then went to Michaels the craft store and picked out three acrylic paint colors I liked (all shades of browns and tans) and I grabbed a bottle of metallic brown to add some spunk and shine to my creation. After looking at the sponges I decided on one round synthetic sponge and a package of 4-5 natural sea sponges to give my counters different textures.

Once I started I began to feel sick to my stomach, my counters looked like a speckled puppy. I kept dabbing paint and realized "hey it's paint, I can start over if I don't like it" so I got a little more comfortable with my project and really started laying on the layers and playing with my color pallet. With each layer I became more content with my choices and realized they were in fact looking pretty fabulous!

Once I had the pattern I liked I added some metallic sporadically in the mix to give it an extra flare.

Brent did the research on sealing the countertops, I wanted to use a few coats of minwax or something but he wanted them really shinny he said. We decided to use a pour on sealer called Evirotech Lite, sold at Michaels. The problem with that was the mixture only came in 32oz boxes and cost 32 dollars. The 32 oz box only covered 8 square feet, we knew we'd need at least 4 boxes so I started clipping the 40% coupons so buy the sealer.

Now the sealer was no fun at all to put on and there is a huge learning curve. One it says don't brush it on/out. If we had done this our project would have failed as the mixture doesn't run together as it claims. Using a paint brush I evenly distributed it as Brent poured it on the countertops. If you want to try this, I suggest googling the products helpful tips and there is a great website. If you don't mix it properly it will never cure and you have a failed project and no way to fix it besides buying those new counters you didn't want to pay for. READ THE DIRECTIONS :)

Once it was on we let it sit for about 10 min and Brent took a butane torch to our creation to help get ride of bubbles, be careful not to hold the flame to close or you'll get ripples in the sealer (we have a few because we didn't pay close attention) Again I would read the helpful tips, which I will have a link to at the end of this post.

After 48 hours we put the sink back in and marveled in our work. We couldn't be happier with our countertops and we only spent around 200 dollars for the makeover.