when I moved into my current house a few years ago I had some left over solid ash boards that I decided to use as a temporary worksurface in the kitchen. to begin with the kitchen consisted of a butler sink on a workmate and boards resting across the fridge & freezer tops.
now three years later the sink is properly plumbed in and mounted and the ash boards have been planed, cut to fit and bracketed as seperates. they look great.
the point here is that we just love them as a worksurface, they dont make any noise (like stone does) are bright and natural and at a pinch can be used as chopping boards themselves.
Faced with the problem of how to seal them, I was reluctant to use oil or wax because of placing hot pans, cutting on them, making pastry, bread etc, and being a rather undecided sort I just left them raw.
The answer to how to finish them sort of developed of its own accord. I made the entire kitchen so that the sections of wortop could be lifted out, taken into the garden and given a quick sand down with a belt sander whenever they really needed it. It turns out that they have only needed sanding once, after a very lavish takeaway curry that stained them yellow with turmeric. so now the sanding is sort of a spring cleaning thing, just to make everything look new.
For day to day maintenance we wipe the draining board (yes it is untreated ash too) with the washing up pad every time we wash up, and once every few months give the other surfaces a quick rub with the same green scourer (sometimes a bit of bleach too). the raised grain that results when freshly planed wood gets wet, gets scoured off after a few weeks and the surfaces are lovely and smooth even when wet.
Spitting fat just isnt a problem, it wipes off with a bit of washing up liquid. the worst problem is tannin staining from tea and coffee, but that scrubs off easily enough.
suprisingly the surfaces actually look better once they have settled in after being sanded, they get paler and sort of silvery. In a few years they will probably start to have uneven surfaces where the heaviest use is, but I kind of like that, much like butchers blocks.
My last kitchen had a melamine surface that was only good for putting things down on, we couldnt cut on it, put hot things on it, even rolling pastry was a pain, of course we used chopping boards, bread boards etc - with this kitchen the surfaces are the boards, as big as you could ever need, we work them! (only one board now for meat - a wooden one, beech, for its natural antiseptic qualities - safety first).
a couple of weeks ago I was reading a builders manual from 1908 and the book had quite a lot to say about kitchen surfaces, drainers in particular. It implied that only a fool would permanently fix wooden worksurfaces when they need to be removable for cleaning - seems I have stumbled upon the old way of doing kitchen surfaces. oiling them simply makes the cleaning process much more labour intensive.
so as you might have guessed, I would suggest leaving your splashbacks untreated and easily removable, so they can be rubbed down whenever they need it.
