If you want to cut and chop on that counter, then only mineral oil will be a safe coating. If you intend to use a cutting board, then any stain plus film forming coating will work. Any coating is food safe once cured. You do not need to limit yourself to the esoteric and ineffective. Just do a standard poly coating.

Birch does not take stain well. It is best just mineral oiled and used as is. If you want a darker wood tone, use walnut.

We had originally planned to renovate the kitchen at the same time as the bathrooms. We cut and removed the peninsula during planning to see what the space felt like opened up so there was a raw edge and missing section in the original-from-1960-peeling-laminate-countertop. Also the previous owners replaced the sink with one that was about 2 inches too small for the hole so that needed to be replaced anyway. We also bought a new refrigerator that fit in the space if you measured the space between the upper cabinets. But not if you measured between the countertops (lesson learned) so they needed to be cut to accommodate for that.

Finding a contractor was so difficult that we scaled back to just the bathrooms (thankfully because the contractor we hired was awful). So now we need to put back together a kitchen we were not nice to because we never intended to actually have to use it.

We are doing the work ourselves- painting the cabinets inside (they were stinky) and out, replacing hardware, new sink and countertop - to make it livable. Knowing us, it will probably be more like 5 years when we redo the kitchen. (But a girl can dream it will only be 2-3.)

Patricia Colwell Consulting

Once all the doors are painted, they will go back on and the blue will only be visible when we are getting something out. I figured if I had to paint inside anyway, I might as well use a color that makes me happy.

We used dark tung oil from Milk 2 years ago on cheapo birch butcherblock from Home Depot. Didn't even cut it with the citrus. Chose tung oil as it seems 100 times less toxic than minéral oil or other options. Very happy with how it has held up. Liquid spills still bead up on it 2 years later and zero staining. More golden than walnut, but à deeper, richer color than what we started with. I love the dark tung. We use it on everything now. 1st pic is my stairwell surround, 2nd is the countertop.

Thanks kj s! That helps so much!

Is the countertop sticky at all? I have heard horror stories about never ending stickiness with tung oil. And got a little worried about it. Everything I’ve read is so conflicting - tung is easy to use, it’s not easy to use, oils will always be oily, oils are great, this one is safe, actually no it’s not safe. It’s so hard to know what to chose.

Never been sticky.

Love your cabinet color combo. Made me think of the TV show black mirror.