Capitolo Cinque: Experiments in our DIY Kitchen Refresh
Welcome to Chapter 5 of my posts on our DIY renovation of our tiny Italian villa! If you didn’t already catch them, click the links to read my previous posts in this series: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. In this post, I’ll share how we refreshed (and re-refreshed) our kitchen to make it pretty and liveable.
Our kitchen, like most kitchens newly purchased homes in Italy, came incomplete. The sellers didn’t remove all the cabinets and appliances, but instead left a block of pre-fab cabinets and a laminate countertop in rough shape. An ancient fridge remained in a separate, non-matching cabinet. The sellers did take their gas oven and stovetop so we immediately replaced these with electrical versions. Appliances in Italy typically use gas but in our house the stove was connected to a weathered gas tank in the back garden through a tube running through the wall. Yikes! The fridge promptly started leaking so we also replaced it with an upgrade.
To give you an idea, this is what we were working with:
In an ideal world, we would rip out the pre-fab junk and start anew, but we didn’t have that in our budget so opted for a DIY refresh instead. Our white laminate countertops were water-damaged as no one had thought to use caulking anywhere and the backsplash was an inexpensive sticker so we knew we needed to tackle these. Plus we had no counter space, just three little surface sections.
Our kitchen experimentation began and ended with the countertops. We had several setbacks, but MacGyvered our way to a good result that will withstand some time. To remedy the water damage, I promptly painted the countertops (for tips on how to do this see my post) and applied a countertop “transparent” sealant. Unfortunately, despite the product stating it was transparent and stain-resistant, it did yellow after a month’s usage and took on literally every single stain we could throw at it. Ugh. Another issue with doing a DIY reno in in foreign country – you can’t always find the products you know will work (e.g. polyurethane isn’t available as a varnish here).
Back to the drawing board for round 2. After installing a backsplash (my first attempt at tile work), we decided the countertops would be better in a grey colour. We re-sanded and re-painted the countertops using the same painting method and instead decided to try epoxy resin for a clear and durable finish.
Big mistake number 2! Neither of us has worked with resin previously so we watched countless videos, read the instructions 20 times, did a test on a sample piece of laminate board (which worked PERFECTLY) and then followed the steps to a T. Using a kitchen scale, we measured the exact amounts of each component of the resin, heated the product to prevent bubbles, mixed the two components slowly for longer than the manufacturer recommended and poured the resin.
So many problems. First, there was evidently not enough resin for the surface despite the fact that we followed the recommended amounts. This caused the resin to retreat from the edges of the countertop. Second, the resin was too drippy even after an hour so it failed to properly adhere to the sides of the countertop. Third and worst, it NEVER cured! The manufacturer actually answered my What’s App messages and stated we should sand it down and start again but how does one sand sticky half-cured glue?
Typically when resin goes wrong, you can just re-pour a second coat. In this case, we’d need to dig right down to the original countertop to do so. No thank you. Onto experiment round 3! Since the stove we installed was a standard size and the countertops a smaller size, the height difference was an issue with which we were prepared to live. That said, for our third attempt we had a local carpenter cut us three boards to spec that would bring the countertop to the same level as the stove. We painted the pieces of board to match the countertop below, sealed them with a much better varnish (trust me I tested it with the toughest stains) and glued them to the resin-ruined counters.
To finish the job, we added a tiny bit of wood filler to close the gap between old and new countertop, repainted the edges and re-sealed everything with varnish. The end result [insert sigh of relief] is a levelled countertop protected from water and stains and looking more consistent than our first attempt. A kitchen island with a leaf and a couple of metal stools expanded the counter space and voilà!
What did we learn from this experience? Like every adventure in DIY renovation at this villa, we learned that patience is critical as is dogged determination to finish a project when something fails…because in Italy, failure is, at some point, a certainty. Finally, resin is much more fun to try on a project you can work on in your garage, but not a great first-time experiment for your existing countertops you use everyday. Lesson(s) learned.
More to come on Under the Puglian Sun: Adventures in Renovating Our Italian Villa. Don’t miss a post, follow the blog below!
Stay tuned for Chapter 6: Interior Progress, Exterior Mayhem.