Author’s note: I am a little behind on these posts, but for once it is not for a lack of writing . . . the Central Valley in California has been dealing with a massive fog cloud that has not moved for weeks now. As a result, the temperature has barely risen above 50 since before Thanksgiving, which means that I cannot do a lot of the stuff I need to do right now outside. So, I only have one “final product” picture (see the banner image above) . . . you will just have to imagine the rest!
There’s “dated,” and then there’s “atrocious.” Somehow, our camper’s countertops and table managed to be both. I was approximately twelve when our Coleman Cape Cod pop-up camper was built (a sobering thought when I consider how “old” it is), so I was both alive and conscious of my surroundings when someone made the aesthetic judgment call to give its particle board surfaces a splotchy blue laminate top. And you know what? I don’t remember my parents or any of my friends’ families owning anything with that color scheme. Sure, I recall there being lots of wood paneling, and a fair number of those old suede davenports with pictures of wagons on them, and thick drapes seasoned over the years with plumes of cigarette smoke, and wooly carpets stockpiling decades of food crumbs and dead skin cells and animal hair, and giant console televisions with either a Nintendo or a Sega Genesis (NEVER both, at least where I lived) perched on top . . . but nothing, anywhere, with that weird shade of blue.
As much as I favor historic preservation, these countertops had to go.
So this begged the question: what should we replace them with?
Well, maybe it is the academic in me, but as with many other questions that prompt a single answer came up with three instead.
Benchtops: Red Oak, Green Moss, and a Hidden Gray
The red oak was just standing there, doing nothing except getting wet.
I bought several rough red oak boards a couple months ago for use on a different project. Shortly thereafter, we bought the pop-up, and I tabled the other projects for the time being. But as I’ve mentioned in other posts, we had our first winter storm of the season just a couple of days after taking possession of the camper. Like Gremlins and the Wicked Witch of the West, unfinished wood does not hold up very well in the rain, so within a few days I saw some moss and mildew beginning to ascend the planks like kudzu.
It would be a shame to let good (i.e., expensive) wood go to waste, so I improvised a solution: I would make some new benchtops and cabinets for the pop-up. After planing several boards down to about half an inch thickness, I trimmed their edges and cut them down to the width of the original particle wood benchtops. Then I joined them together with pocket screws and wood glue. I also added a 3 1/4″ inch diameter hole to one of the pieces for a grommet I am going to add later.
The tricky part was the finish. I bought some Flagstone-colored Teak Oil + Stain at Home Depot, and because my brain works differently than most I looked at the color pictured on the can instead of visualizing the color it named. You can see the difference pretty clearly on the product’s Amazon page:
Anyway, suffice it to say, after thoroughly sanding the wood and applying some conditioner to facilitate the finishing process, I was curious why the stain itself seemed so . . . gray. JoAnna and I had agreed on a darker stain for the counter/bench-tops, like walnut or nutmeg. After a lot of superfluous stirring, two applications, and a couple days cure time, however, the final product still looked pale, as if the boards had seen the Ghost of Christmas Camper Past.
In the end, I mitigated this error somewhat by dousing the pieces a couple of times with a more appropriately-colored Danish oil. It did not completely offset the gray streaks, but the wood has taken on a redder tint. Now that the lacquer top coat is on and the pieces have a slight gleam to them, they basically pass for what we had envisioned all along.
The Dinette Table: Creating a Pop-Up Diner in an Actual Pop-Up
I don’t know what the term is for a non-sexual fetish (I’m sure the Germans have a word for it . . .), but that’s how I would describe my affinity for diners. I don’t necessarily mean the food—I fix a better breakfast than the average short order cook, and most evenings I would prefer Phở over a patty melt—but I’ve loved the diner aesthetic for as long as I remember. It may be the memories I have of going to the Scott City, Missouri Huddle House in the middle of the night with friends back in college; or the occasional date at the Omega Cafe in South Milwaukee; or going to Cafe 50s in West Los Angeles the morning of my PhD comprehensive exam and taking my stress out on an omelet. Whatever it is, I adore diners, and I seldom pass up an opportunity to grab supper at our local Mel’s.
I did not explicitly have diners in mind when I began designing our breakfast nook remodel, but they quickly began to dominate my design choices. I used some oak from JoAnna’s father’s ranch that I had laying around for a few years in our old garage to make a wrap-around bench, and our walls are covered from floor to ceiling with diner pastiche. I even put up some black and white photos of an old Steak n’ Shake crew that I found online. If I ever get my hands on an old high school volleyball calendar or a front page picture of a prize horse bound for the Kentucky Derby in some local newspaper, you can bet I will find some space for it.
I was more explicit this time around in channeling the diner motif. Our pop-up’s dining booth is really just a not-so-glorified folding table. Of course, it had the same dull blue laminate as the other countertops, so it matched its equally hideous neighbors. Rather than replacing the table itself or even the top, I decided to paint it and then give it a shiny epoxy glaze. I also wanted some kind of scalloped metal trim around the sides.
The latter item on the wishlist took the least amount of time to fix, but the most time to research. Most commercially-available scalloped metal edge trims are 1.25″ high or taller, and the t-shaped molds placed the back piece about three quarters of an inch down from the top. The problem was that this table’s surface was only about a half inch thick. This meant that I had to make my own, which led to another problem: I don’t have the equipment or the skillset to scallop a metal edge band. I asked a few friends of mine if they had bead rollers I could use, and at one point I even thought of using a can opener to run a few lines down the middle of the 20mm wide adhesive metal edge banding I ordered on Amazon. In the end, though, I decided on a simpler solution: I ordered another roll of adhesive metal edge banding. This one was only 15mm wide, so I carefully glued it onto the wider one as I unrolled it. It’s not what I originally had in mind, but the two bands stacked together give the combined piece enough vertical relief that it at least appears scalloped. And I didn’t even have to buy a bead roller, so . . . score!
If the metal edge band took a lot of cognitive time relative to what I needed to actually assemble it, the paint and epoxy top coat process was the opposite. The painting part was breezy and fun. After scuffing the surface with 220 grit sandpaper, I applied a spray coat of white primer. I then gave it a colonial red base coat, followed by several rounds of dusting the surface with yellow, orange, and candy apple red spray paint (I’m fairly certain the clerk at the hardware store who sold me the paint thought that I was some kind of middle-aged graffiti artist). Once the table was dry, I laid down two full coats of glossy sealant and painted the legs marbled black with some Rust-oleum. I also had Clementine help me spread a little flakes of glitter on the top so that we could make it sparkle in the light. However, once we moved on to the epoxy (which only took half an hour to mix and apply), we were hindered by one factor we could not control: the weather.
Epoxy resin cures best in temperatures between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Last week I poured the epoxy and blasted the table with a heat gun for about twenty minutes, which helped the resin set while allowing the bubbles to escape. Later that night, though, the temperature dropped down to almost freezing. When I went outside the following morning to check on it, I could tell the epoxy was still wet to the touch.
With rain on the way and no end to the cold snap in sight, I gingerly picked up the table like a caterer carrying a tray full of champagne flutes, and moved it into my heated workshop. It finally started to cure, but there are still a lot of little tiny bubbles throughout the glaze. I’m going back and forth on whether it is worth sanding it down and applying a top coat, but for the time being I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Butchering the Butcher’s Block
The last non-sitting or sleeping surface in the pop-up (besides the floor) was the kitchen counter. As with the other countertops, it was a pale blue. Although the previous owners did a fantastic job cleaning it, the color was less than appetizing. I did not want to cook on this surface as-is.
Early on in the process, I wanted to build and install a butcher block countertop. I’ve always wanted to make butcher block, and like most backyard woodworkers I had plenty of scraps laying around. Butcher block gives one an excuse to hoard all of the long, stray cut-offs that come from ripping pieces of wood on a table saw. A one inch wide by twelve foot long oak furring strip does not hold a lot of promise for most projects, but it is perfect for butcher block.
The formula for butcher block is simple: take lots of wood strips, lots of wood glue, lots of clamps, and then squeeze them all together into a sticky, pressurized sandwich. In practice, though, it is a bit more complicated. For instance, every wooden line needs to have a uniform width from one end to the other, so if you have a strip of wood that has a narrow bit then you’re going to have to plane the rest of the board down to that lowest common denominator. Also, there are a few aesthetic principles to consider when arranging the wood. Although there is no rule against alternating wood species within a single horizontal line, it might look a little weird to have a lighter and a darker tone along the same horizontal axis on either side of a sink. It is also prudent to alternate tones across the vertical axis, or to at least make them cohere together somehow in a way that seems more planned than haphazard.
In any case, I am always happy to complete a project with wood I already own. Last year, I bought and assembled a small wooden storage locker for my bike. The package arrived on a palette, and its individual components were stacked on top of one another with long, thick, square-shaped pine dowels. Since I refuse to throw wood away, the dowels have been leaning against our house like medieval pikes ever since. Fortunately, this project gave me an opportunity to finally use them for something. I also had several long strips of walnut and mahogany from a previous build, which offered a color contrast to the pine.
However, once I chopped everything up and clamped all the pieces down, I started to realize how difficult it is to create butcher block with a 11″ inch throated planer, especially when I had to dimension them down at least 50% in terms of their thickness. This resulted in a lot of passes through the planer (some were rougher than others) and a lot of juggling to make sure that they all ended up having the same thickness.
Anyway, it’s still cold outside, so the glue-up is moving at a glacial pace. It’s mostly done right now, but it looks more like an Amish Tetris game than a countertop. With some luck, I will have some snazzy photos to show next week.
Until next time . . .
