Adding Stainless Steel Counters To The Kitchen: a house log

Today we are working away on demo-ing out the old balcony where the new deck is going to go (since Mother Nature rained us out yesterday) so we hope to have more photos to share of our progress soon (Monday at the latest if all goes well!).

 

In the meantime, we thought this excellent budget-friendly kitchen idea was such a smart solution. We never truly considered stainless steel counters, but after seeing Linn and her husband make it look so straightforward (and affordable) we are certainly into it. Here is Linn’s note:

I hoped to share a Hands-on pointer for countertops which is not truly that common, but it is a strong idea if you are on a budget and you do not mind doing some work yourself. When my husband and I renovated our kitchen we were able to get excellent looking stainless steel countertops for the bargain price of $400 (for a small 20 square foot counter). A big box hardware store quoted us $3,000 to put in and install in short the same thing!! Here are our old formica counters during our renovation:

We made a plywood template to the exact size of our counter and worked with a local sheet metal shop that cut and bended a piece of 20 gauge stainless steel around our plywood template.

Then we installed the plywood on top of our old Formica counters…

… and brought in the steel on top of it (it is covered in a protective sticker in this shot)…

This option proved to be so much cheaper than many other materials around, so if anyone else is contemplating what type of counters to put in, and they do not want to spend all of their budget on granite or marble, then I would highly recommend this method!

Stainless steel looks strong, is especially durable, and requires no maintenance whatsoever!: Stainless steel is also straightforward to clean!

We truly enjoy how it turned out! – Linn

Obviously a lot of other strong stuff went into Linn’s transformation, so hit up her journal for more details about everything – from those excellent stainless steel counters to the kitchen project as a whole. Have you folks considered stainless steel? Did you know you could get assist from a local sheet metal shop to accomplish something like this for thousands less than buying stainless counters the traditional way?

UPDATE: Since a lot of the comments are asking about long-term care and durability of Linn’s counters, here is a link to a post she did with her thoughts on it.

Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner, so click here to see if it is you.