My understanding is that it depends on whether you want to chop directly on it. If yes, food safe oils like good old fashioned mineral oil. Or a beeswax and mineral oil combo (spoon oil? salad bowl oil). If no, then there are many options that are less labour intensive!

We put the IKEA oak counter in, around a sink. Have used the mineral oil and beeswax combo oil, but I'm monitoring the sink and faucet, wondering if I chose well wrt a finish.

Pearl, do a search for Waterlox. Many here (including me) have used this to finish wood counters, islands, etc.

Eliz

We have a section of beech (or maybe oak; I'm amazed that I can't remember) butcherblock counter from IKEA and we finished it with many coats of tung oil (after a lot of sanding to prepare it). It's not in an area where we do any food prep and would never be used as a cutting surface but I think the tung oil would be okay if food came into contact with it (although apparently those with nut allergies may react to tung oil). It looks good though and is quite waterproof -- at least for the minor spills and condensation from glasses that's it's received so far.

Great suggestions so far. We don't cut directly on our wood counter and have a sink in it, so used Waterlox and love it. You certainly do want something on it.

I just finished finishing my new Ikea wood counter top. This is the second one I have done. The first one I used mineral oil, I was not very happy with it, it always looked dry & I oiled it constantly.

This one I decided to use polymerized tung oil, this time I have a beautiful finish which is water resistant. There is some debate on food safe, most of the wood finishing forums now agree that most finishes are food safe once cured.

If you are going to use your countertop as a cutting board you might want to use mineral oil, but I use my counter like any other counter & I use a cutting board.

Thanks for the suggestions. I should have mentioned in my original post....
yes... we do intend to use it as a cutting surface.... so it would be subject to food contact.

Then as stated above you'll need to use mineral oil or some kind of mineral oil beeswax finish.

I would just use a mineral oil and beeswax combination. Some people prefer the look of tung oil as it has a darker more amber color to it.

And by tung oil finish I don't mean Waterlox. I see a lot of posts calling Waterlox a tung oil finish which is really not correct. Waterlox is a varnish, just like the oil based Minwax Polyurethane you find at any hardware store. But it uses phenolic resins instead of polyurethane resins and one of the oils in the forumulation is tung. But it is very different than a 100% tung oil finish.

Don't get my wrong, I love the look and repairability of Waterlox compared to many finishes but I would not put it on a food prep counter.