Reviving an Old Cutting Board

Recent­ly, I had the task of reviv­ing an old cut­ting board. It giv­en to me by a sweet friend of mine no longer had use for it and knew I had a grow­ing col­lec­tion. As beau­ti­ful as it was, it need­ed a lit­tle bit of TLC. It was dry and had notice­ably not been con­di­tioned in quite some time. With­in a few min­utes I had this beau­ty shin­ing again! 

Reviv­ing an old cut­ting board is real­ly quite sim­ple. The next time you find one at a yard sale or at a thrift store you may think twice about pass­ing it up. Here is what you need to know.

I start­ed by clean­ing the board with mild soap and water and a bris­tle brush. My favorite soap ever is the Rose­wa­ter and Drift­wood Scent by Cal­drea.…oh my word is it heav­en­ly. I have seri­ous­ly nev­er smelt a soap so heav­en­ly. They have sev­er­al amaz­ing scents to choose from which you can find HERE. I per­son­al­ly can only speak for the drift­wood scent but I am cer­tain the oth­ers will be just a nice!

After scrub­bing it clean I made sure it was good and dry. I dried this one with a dish­cloth but you could also place it in a warm oven. In that case all you would need to do it turn on your oven and allow it to heat to about 350 degrees and turn it off. Place your board on the mid­dle rack while the oven is cooling.

Once dry this is when the trans­for­ma­tion begins. I have this obses­sion with con­di­tion­ing wood, the trans­for­ma­tion is so sat­is­fy­ing to watch. You can see the wood wake up right before your eyes. There are plen­ty of food safe options out there as far as wood con­di­tion­ers go but I per­son­al­ly make my own using beeswax and coconut oil. I shared the recipe on the blog before and I will link it HERE if you would like to make your own. There may be more pro­fes­sion­al means of appli­ca­tion but for me I just scoop the con­di­tion­er out with my fin­gers and apply it to the sur­face of the board like I would lotion. Cov­er all the edges and watch your wood come to life. 

I was absolute­ly gid­dy about how beau­ti­ful this board real­ly was. Under­neath all the dry­ness were some beau­ti­ful char­ac­ter­is­tics. Scuffs and marks that not only aged the piece but gave it tremen­dous char­ac­ter. I have it proud­ly dis­played on my counter tops and plan to revive all the boards I can get my hands on.