The wooden countertops

Not pretty ones -- they would have been in poor houses, because from the 1950s on, countertops, at least in California, were made of tile or Formica, and later on granite, if you were really fancy. The ones we remembered were the type a lower-income handy-man husband would have put in his own kitchen. Lots of people in the day didn’t even have countertops, but only a kitchen table and maybe a butcher block. For some reason, Ginny and I stuck to the idea of wooden counters made for a modern kitchen, and talked for weeks about how they might be made. Then, in the mid-2000s, Ikea made available a new product: wooden butcher-block countertops, in various widths. Once again, our good ideas had been somehow broadcast into the ether, and somebody else was doing it first, while we were still drinking our coffee.

When it came time for my husband and I to plan the Turkey move, we discussed buying and shipping lengths of the Ikea countertops. When we found out there were Ikeas in Turkey, we decided to pick them up there, instead. Needless to say, all Ikeas don’t carry the same stock, and when we got to Turkey, we found that the wooden countertops had not found a Turkish market yet; there were none to be had. But we were on a mission, and just because the Turkish Ikeas decided not to carry the countertops, we wouldn’t give up our plans for them so easily. The cabinet makers we talked to thought we were nuts, the lumber places thought about the same, and things were going nowhere, until a man at what became our favorite hardware/lumber store reluctantly showed us some beautiful material fabricated for doors and stairs. It was made from two-inch by two-inch hardwood, glued together into smooth, wide planks, and came by the meter; it was perfect for our purposes. This man also thought we were nuts, but agreed to cut the door material into countertop shapes and sell it to us, but we had to pay in full first, in cash. He was taking no chances on our eccentric plans.

While the Great Countertop Hunt was on, our brother was putting in the kitchen cabinets. Early on in the process, Brother Efkan had offered to get us some cabinets that had been made for another customer of the factory he worked at who had changed his mind about them before they had been installed. They were blackish green, and much more rustic than I had imagined for the house. There were quite a few of these cabinets, but not enough for the whole kitchen, so I pretty much pooh-poohed the idea, until I found out the difference in price between these old, made-for-someone-else cabinets and brand-new ones of a similar quality; all of a sudden, sand-blasted forest green nearly custom cabinets became my heart’s desire.

The ‘tile guy’

At the same time as Efkan was working on making the used cabinets fit and constructing new ones to match, we were Swiss-cheesing in a tile usta (master) to tile the entire wall upon which Efkan would hang the cabinets. We hadn’t realized the whole wall needed to be tiled, and hadn’t planned very well. This poor fellow was a one-time usta, I’m afraid, and not really even an usta, but I still don’t know the Turkish word for not-quite-journeyman. That is really a messy, unpleasant story in itself, and I only bring it up to explain how things were really cooking at this point, what with the tile guy in the evenings, the cabinetry on and off all day, and the Great Countertop Hunt a work in progress. While we weren’t trying to convince vendors that you can, too, have wooden countertops, we were shopping for a sink and faucets, which we ended up buying at the same place where we got the last-minute tile. And about the tile? I am pretty thrifty, but not when it comes to household things I am going to see every day of my life. Although my husband thought I was out of my mind, I ordered some very pretty, smaller tiles with a nubby surface, interspersed with a few REALLY expensive picture tiles, in a warm gold color. I really had to work to convince my spouse, because it was about three times more expensive than regular kitchen tile. I finally sold him on it because of how lovely the dull gold tones of the glaze really complimented the forest green of the cabinets, and how nicely it tied in with the yellow walls of the room. To his credit, when it turned out the tile was not gold (it was an old sample) but actually a light rusty peach, he didn’t say a word. We didn’t have time to go through the process again, so peach it was and peach it is today. (As it turned out, the color goes great with everything, including the wooden countertops, just in case anyone cares.)

The last serious culture battle was over the wood finish. Efkan, who is a professional cabinet-maker, while more open-minded than most about the countertops, just insisted that they had to be varnished, or better yet, painted. I wanted them to be oil finished, and now I understand why he just didn’t get it. I am sure that somewhere in Turkey there are oil-finish wood working ustas, who make fine woodwork using natural finishes, but they sure aren’t readily available in Gebze, and neither were good furniture oils, which do-it-yourself Americans can find readily in the States. Regular Turkish cabinets, furniture and shelving is pretty much pre-finished, and looks very nice, but I had too many pre-set views as to wood finishing, which was sort of a hobby of mine back home. I was finally, desperately, going to use common mineral oil; the closest I could find in Turkey, commercially, was liquid Vaseline at the pharmacy, for about TL 10 for a small bottle. I tried almond oil, and something called Hind oil; I even tried olive oil. I had to do at least a rough seal on the bottoms of the counters before they were installed, so I was just slapping on anything that appeared to be non-toxic and oily. I was doing all this myself because, frankly, the men in my life wanted nothing to do with my girly foreigner unorthodoxy; if I wasn’t going to listen to their good advice, then I was on my own. So I sanded and polished and sanded again, and looked for suitable oil any chance I got. Then, in an unrelated trip, we went to the Ikea in Ümraniye. We happened to see a new product that was just what I needed! It was an oil-based sealer that was very, very easy to use, and for a good price. The only drawback, the fly in the ointment? The O’Henry-esque twist? Well, the product that finally made my eccentric project such a triumph was stocked at Ikea to supplement the nice, new butcher-block countertops they had just then brought to Turkey, not six months after our own arrival. I could hear Ginny laughing all the way from California.