How We Turned A Bowling Alley Lane Into A Kitchen Counter (Day 1)

This was a daunting task.  I knew we could do it but it was one of those things that I was just afraid to begin.  We kind of kept putting it off until neither of us could park in the garage, the cabinets were scheduled to be installed, and, well, we just knew it was time.

We knew the dimension we wanted and we knew one of the bowling alley lanes was in much better condition than the other so the "good" one was picked to be our 9' section.  Each one was 10 feet long so not much was needed off the ends.  The sides were another story because bowling alleys are 42 inches wide.  As a reference, a standard counter is 25 inches deep.  I just assumed we make this job as easy as possible because each one of those skinny little boards is 2.5 inches deep and held to the adjacent ones with screws and/or nails.  I thought "we" would just cut one side off but lucky for me, I'm married to a guy who like things done the right way.  Having a carpenter (with all his knowledge and tools) as a friend is also very handy.

Anyway, the boys cut off equal amounts from each side so the arrows would be centered at the end of my "new" counter!

Another interesting tidbit is that even though there are thousands of screws holding these lanes together, braces are still needed underneath to keep the center from sagging or bowing!  Luckily, I did my research and knew this and the guys were smart enough to shorten and replace the braces that were already in place so we could just reuse what we had.

In order to put the counter on top of the cabinets, the brace could not cover all of the boards in the bowling alley.  We decided to put 10 inch screws into the front not only to secure the last 2 or 3 boards but also to simulate the look of the screws throughout the entire lane-turned-counter.

Before those screws were put in though, I wanted a line routed into the face of the front piece of wood.  This exaggerated what was already there because the edge of counters shows how each board is slightly tongue-and-grooved to the next one.  I thought it would look cool if this was more prominent.

After they brought the giant and heavy bowling alley counter-top inside to scribe it to the wall, it had to go back outside to actually be scribed and then sanded.  (I was not part of this scribing process so if you're using this as a tutorial, let me know and I can find out how they did it.)

Sanding the old sealant off, baffled us.  It wasn't just the potential toxins in the sealant but I also didn't know what to use.  I didn't know if we should rent an industrial floor sander or simply use our palm sander and the belt sander that our friend owns.  We ended up using a combination of a hand sander (I felt very 19th Century) and the palm and belt sanders. 

We started with 80 grit sandpaper and progressed all the way up to 220 grit to make it nice and smooth.  It was very messy and I've never been so happy to wear a face mask!

It was tedious work but achieved the look we wanted.

The next step was to get it back into the house so it could be sealed but sealing is another day and another post.  (Spoiler alert!  It turned out great.  We've been using is since the last week of November.)

Peace,

Stacey