100%. It's like any woodworking i do - I know where all the mistakes are, and they bug me, but nobody else can ever see them. As someone once said, as you become better, you don't always make less mistakes, you just get better at hiding them.

I would put something on top of it and never worry about it. Like maybe a silicone mat or something. If you use a coffee maker or anything you should put something like that under it anyway to control spills.

There are people who want super-clear countertops 100% of the time who this would bother. I'm not one of them ;)

If i really couldn't deal with it, i'd save up the thousand bucks to get a solid red-oak plank countertop (This looks to be about 8-10 lineal feet of countertop, but maybe there's more elsewhere), and do that.

When you account for all the work and cost that would go into refinishing what's there, the price difference is not likely to be huge.