Counters, Revisited: Probably Ill-Advised Pre-Thanksgiving DIY Shakedown, Part II

We have had a scheduling delay on the new countertop, so we're spiffing up other areas while we wait. The granite arrives on Thursday, which gave us this past weekend to twiddle our thumbs and wander aimlessly around Home Depot.

The wandering, combined with a lovely Fall day, as well as pending kitchen spifferation, inspired us to refinish the wooden countertops again. Looking back at that post, it's been over a year since the first stain/finish experiment, and we have some lessons learned:

• Cabot Polystain (stain & topcoat combined) was indeed very durable, and held up to a ton of washing, dinging, food prep, etc.
• It did not, however, weather popping/splattering grease from the stove. At all. We figure this will be an issue with any product, and opted to put a glass cutting board over the side of the counter that got the most grease-splatter abuse. This has since worked out great (and given us another cutting surface), but the damage had been done:

We'd expected to have to refinish them again, and figured that our stain treatment (while maybe not as durable) would be much easier to re-do than the original--the Mr. went through a zillion rotary sander pads trying to get whatever marine-grade shellac the previous owners had off. (We even tried two kinds of chemical stripping agent, and both failed miserably.)

It did indeed prove much easier than the first time. In the space of about an hour they were all sanded back down and ready to restain.  The Captain kept an eye on the proceedings:

This time, we're going with Minwax Polyshades in 'American Chestnut' gloss, instead of satin. It's going to be a little richer of a color than before, and hopefully by the second/third coat it won't be too dark.  Stay tuned...