Butcher Block Countertop Advice

Submitted by tssroo on Tue, 07/30/2013 - 07:32

Hello! This is my first post on here and I'm hoping this is the right place for this question. We purchased butcher block countertops from Menards. We (My husband and I) are new to woodworking and would like to possibly hire somebody to cut our boards to size. They need ripped because they are 3 feet wide, where our countertops are only 2 ft wide (maybe 2 1/2, don't quote me on that). We may attempt this ourselves in the end. We had a handyman come out who had never worked with butcher block and he gave us an estimate of 1,000 dollars to do the entire cut-install process. I was planning on staining and sealing them so that seemed high to us. Does anybody have advice on who to even contact to do this type of work? Should we attempt to do this ourselves? There are so much helpful blogs out there, but none seem to have had to have the boards ripped.

Thank you so so much!

JeremyFox

Fri, 08/16/2013 - 02:57

You should contact a local cabinet shop or someone who makes custom kitchens for example - they'd be able to do the rip cut for you. In the UK we'd use a kitchen fitter for this type of work and it's very easy to do, if you have the right tools (router, router jig and rip saw), so shouldn't be expensive - $1000 seems very high. The main cost comes from the labour of making corners (i.e. if the countertop has to go around an L shaped corner for example). Usually you'd need 2 people to do this because butcher block is quite heavy (as I'm sure you know by now). If the counter is a straight run it should take no more than 2 hours to cut and fit - so say $150 (there's usually a "going rate" for a particular area). For another example, my first countertop took me (alone) all day to fit and it had a cutout for a belfast sink, drainer grooves and a 90 degree bend.

I'm not sure if you're in the US or not (I'm not) but you might find someone if you ask this question on Lumberjocks.com.

Hope that helps.
Good luck,

Jeremy

JeremyFox

Fri, 08/16/2013 - 02:58

I meant to say, the rip cut would take me about 45 minutes - 1 hour