We are remodeling our kitchen and my wife wants to use soapstone for the countertops. I don’t know a thing about soapstone — any experience with it?
My main question, though, is about the face frames for the boxes that I’ll build. I was thinking of using white oak assuming that it isn’t as porous as other woods. Is there a good finish for cabinets that might prevent spills and stains from coming out (specifically if a child spills – or draws – on the doors and drawers).
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Soapstone looks beautiful. However, it is a pretty soft material yo use as a countertop. It scratched pretty easily and has some maintenance requirements. A friend of mine did a kitchen in soapstone and because of its softness would not use it again.
White Oak will work fine for your face frames. You can apply a nice stain and several coats of Polyurethane to give a tough durable finish that will clean up well.
Thanks hotdogman. Good to know about your friend. My wife wanted to originally go with only a soapstone sink but was considering it for counters despite the softness. Maybe a combination of soapstone plus some other harder material where cutting primarily occurs would be a good bet.
It is not just where you cut it either - it will flake if anything is dropped on it, and can chip.
You'd be better asking a supplier if they can do you an epoxy countertop that looks like soapstone. They are almost indestructible.
Seconding the polyurethane finish for the cabinets. Nothing better. Finish the tops too, before attaching the countertop though to ensure no water can wick in there.
Soapstone is beautiful. But it needs a bunch of maintenance. Regular oiling, at a minimum. I'd consider it, but not if I had kids. My grandparents generation used soapstone sinks a lot. They were the budget alternative to enameled cast iron, the only other choice. When other alternatives arrived, soapstone disappeared for a couple of generations. There's a reason for that.
Oh, white oak is a great choice. Use the toughest finish you can find for kitchen cabinets. Precat lacquer if you spray. Or a good poly. If you use oil or some of the many trendy new oil and wax finishe's, you'll be refinishing your whole finish after a few years.
John_C2,
You opine: "If you use oil or some of the many trendy new oil and wax finishes, you'll be refinishing your whole finish after a few years".
Hmmmm - that would depend on the particular oil & wax finish. But it's certainly the case that such a finish can wear. On cabinet doors, wear is not that frequent, though - it's kitchen tops that get the wear.
Personally I have become enamoured of Osmo Top Oil - an oil & wax finish for wooden kitchen counter tops. It's very resilient but can be marked or worn with very vigorous use on our oak kitchen worktops. (VERY vigorous use). But then you just re-do the little patch where it's degraded and within no time that patch has blended in.
In my experience you can't do this with varnish and other hard-film coats. Such coats may be tough but when they do get worn or water gets under them (and it does, eventually) ..... then you really will be finishing the whole counter top, as it's near impossible to do a patch and blend it in.
The oak kitchen counter tops we inherited when we bought our current house had been varnished, only 5 years previously. They were extensively degraded, with flaking spots, water damage, softened spots and quite a bit of wood-blackening. It took a good while to get all the old stuff off and the wood scraped & sanded back to take out the marks and blackening.
So - oil & wax finishes for me. They're so easy to maintain - as well as easy to apply. And they look very good. No plasticising of the wood with those gel & poly goos I read so much about hereabouts.
Lataxe
Kitchen counters are a different story. I wouldn't use a film finish either. But, I would never install a wooden counter for my own use, either.
The problem with finishes billed as "easy to repair" is, they require repair. For kitchen cabinets, I don't want to repair them. I don't want to do more than wipe them down once in a while. A good film finish is by far the best for that. Applied properly, it will not look like plastic.
For the kitchen cabinets I would use a wipe on finish, general finishes has a satin finish that looks great and lasts a long time. For the counter tops, I wanted to do a soapstone but the builder led us away from that will all of the maintenance that was needed. We settled on granite but the color we got was dark and a lot of times we don't see the what we missed when wiping up the top after using it. If I had my druthers I would go with a lighter quartz, so you get to see all of the sticky spots we don't see now. Both quartz and granite are very hard and should last a lifetime.
My wife is into the soapstone look, too. Silestone makes a soapstone-looking quartz, but now we're um, discussing whether it should even be that dark.
Why is dark -- hiding spots -- bad? In a perfect world, all the imperfections are hidden. I'm a fan of invisible stains.
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