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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Caring for Zinc Counters or Tabletops

 Here's my big zinc experiment....after doing several table tops and reading quite a bit about the zinc I mentioned at the bottom of this post on aging it that the patina and wax is not permanent...it wears.
Anything acidic can take off the wax and patina...
If you leave the zinc bare it will darken and grey on it's own over time.  Or you can patina it yourself and wax the surface.   Either way the following things will still affect the surface....

 This is a piece I specifically aged and waxed for this purpose.
Anything acidic will eat through the wax and of course then the patina too....
 And pretty quickly...
 And rubbing the liquid off made it worse...blotting it seemed to affect the surface less.
 Another angle --it seems to look different from different angles but either way it's a definite "mark"
 Leaving it longer didn't really seem to make that much of a difference...

 The photo above is immediately after 
 I've had this piece on our kitchen counter in one spot or another for a couple of months now...
And the spots are darkening back up.

 If you are a neat freak this may not be for you!  I think that if I lived with it as my counter I would just let it just keep building some character of it's own....
You can use scotch brite to take it back to it's original (which looks alot like stainless steel) 
If I had a really huge spot or something that left a very distinct mark I'd probably use that to gently blend it all in and then let it go.
The place we buy our zinc from sells a clear coat that you can spray the surface with but we have not used that and I'm not sure about it being "food safe"...
The general information out there says to just use a damp cloth and mild soap to clean it.
I've also read that you should use a cutting board because it scratches and protection for hot pans or dishes.

4 comments:

  1. Fantastic zinc tabletop and tutorial. I'm just about to tackle my dining room table and am so excited by these beautiful pics! I also write DIY articles for Examiner.com and planned to discuss this project, so I'm happy to feature one of your pics and point people toward this blog if you're interested. (I'm always looking for new content as well, so if you ever want to get another project featured, I hope you'll shoot me an e-mail. Happy to point people toward you. Beautiful work!!
    take care--
    Elizabeth Diskin (you can contact me through my facebook page (www.facebook.com/ecdiskin--that's my professional page (writer)) or www.diskindesigns.com (I do some design work on the side.)

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    1. Elizabeth Thanks so much for all the kind words! I enjoy doing the tutorials although we are not experts by any means at most of the projects we try to tackle. We are learning as we go usually! But it's fun to share what we did and how we did it with others. This set of postings in particular have gotten alot of attention (especially after Apartment Therapy featured it) I would love to have it mentioned on Examiner.com!!! And just appreciate others enjoying it as well! Thanks again and I will definitely keep you in mind for future projects...

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  2. How do the zinc table tops hold up with KIDS? Are they durable?

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  3. Hi, It look great and I to would like to have a go. May I ask, where do you get the zinc sheet? , What thickness?. Does the glue spread completely across the timber surface?, cheers....Nigel Madden

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