A sure fire way to breathe some life into an old kitchen is to update your countertops. As luck would have it, they don’t seem to be that inexpensive anymore. I had the one I'm working on estimated by the locate "box store" and the cost was about $2400.00 dollars. Today there are three basic types of countertops to choose from; natural stone, synthetic or solid surface and laminates. Now just as a general note I’m not including tiles, concrete or metals in the mix though they are and make for some very stunning tops as well.

At the higher end of an already overpriced market there is the ever present “natural stone” which includes such things as granite; marble and soap stone just to name the most common. Some of nature’s most beautiful designs can be found in these stones and the choices can seem endless as well. A good stone yard will have many stones to pick from. Just remember it’s not cheap with prices ranging from around $49.00 to $300.00 per square foot installed. You may catch a deal from time to time on off sizes and “cut-offs” though.  Working with stone will require a more specific set of tools making it more of a professional project then a DIY project.

Then there are the “synthetics or solid surfaces” which fall into two categories; Plastics and solid surfaces (everything else).  Plastics like DuPont™ Corian® are made up of plastics and resins to form a “stone like” product.  The solid surfaces like Silestone® Quartz are made up of either stone or glass “bits” to form a “stone like” product. The design possibilities are near endless with these products, but the cost can sometimes be to the extreme as well.

Lastly there are the “high pressure laminates”, sometimes referred to as simply Formica®, which is just a brand name.  There are many manufacturers of this type product and Wilsonart®, Formica®, Nevamar® and Poinite® are just some of the more popular. The laminates are made up of all things, paper with very hard wearing finished surface. In comparison to the other types, they are fairly inexpensive ranging from $1.00 to $10.00 per square foot purchased. They are easy to come by and not hard to work with ordinary woodworking tools.  They also make for an excellent DIY project and that being the case they will be the focus of the rest of this article.

Making a laminate countertop really isn’t very hard. In most cases the hardest part is picking the laminate you want. You can make a top with just the simplest of working tools like; a circular saw, router and flush cutting bit with bearing, screw gun, glue and clamps. Though a pneumatic nail or staple gun would be nice and so would a “slitter”, but more on those tools later in part two.

When you undertake the making of a laminate countertop it is very important to take careful measurements to determine just how many sheets of substrate and laminate you’ll need to complete the project. A good method to employ is to sketch the countertops on a sheet of ¼” scale graph paper. I make each ¼” square equal to 6” of real space. Once you do this you be able to calculate the square footage of the top and purchase the required sheets of both substrate and laminate. The next order of business would be deciding which substrate “product” to use. The substrate is what you glue the laminate to. The products most often used in making the substrate are either high density ¾” particle board or a better grade of ¾” Birch or Maple plywood. MDF is also being used more and more but, I’m still a fan of high density ¾” particle board and that’s what I’m using and suggesting you do as well. My reasoning for this is fairly simple, it’s comparatively inexpensive and it’s time tested. If you buy HDPB from a well supplied lumberyard you can expect to pay between $16 and $19 dollars a sheet. If you buy it from a “big box store” like Lowes® or Home Depot® you’ll pay about $23 a sheet. Birch or Maple plywood on the other hand is going to be twice or three times that.

Once those decisions have been made it’s time to start making the countertop. Laminate tops have what are called “buildups” and “splices” the former to give the top the illusion of being more massive than it is and the later to join two separate pieces of countertop together. The way this buildup is achieved is by gluing 2-1/2” to 3” wide rips of the substrate material to the edge of the countertop substrate thus making it 1-1/2” thick at the edges.  There are a few ways to accomplish this and I’ll discuss some of them now.

 

Managing large or full size sheet goods:

One thing that’s always an issue when working with full 4x8 foot sheets of plywood or like product is being able to handle and cut them safely and accurately. I think it might be safe to say that most people will not have a full featured cabinet saw with a in and out feed table at their disposal, but if you do then I’m also quite sure you will know how to get the rips needed from your sheet of 4x8 HDPB. If you don’t have a saw like that you might have a smaller bench or constructor type table saw which would be good to use as well but you’d need to first cut the full sheet down in to a more manageable size. This might be something to think about when you first purchase your sheets, you can ask to have them cut to widths of 26” by 8’ since most standard countertops are 25-1/2” wide 26” is a good choice. If for some reason you have a bad wall or a very wavy wall you might want to increase that size to say 28” or even 30” to give you more to scribe when fitting the top.  In any case cutting them down will make it easier for you to transport them if you are picking them up as most will do and easier to cut when the times comes. If you already purchased your sheet goods and didn’t have them cut you’ll need to cut them now to both get the countertop blanks of 26”x96” and the cut offs that remain you will use to make the buildups from as well as the splices that you will use to join to pieces of countertop together.

Cutting Large or full size sheet goods:

 

If you don’t have a table saw then in most cases you’d be using a circular saw to make the cuts in the sheet goods. The quality of the cut will depend on a few aspects of both your equipment and the techniques you employ to make the cuts. Try and use both a good quality saw to make the cuts with. Simply put the better the saw the safer it will be to use and the better the cut it will produce. The working end of a circular is the arbor (where the blade is fastened) and if it has an excess of “run-out” no matter how good of a blade you put on it the cut quality will be poor. So use a descent saw. Next is of course is the blade. Here once again the types and levels of quality can be as infinite as the stars themselves. That said, when cutting plywood or HDPB it’s better to use what is call a crosscut blade. A crosscut blade’s design will have at least 40 teeth and the teeth will be ground with an “Alternating Top Bevel”. Better ones will have expansion slots cut into them to help dissipate the heat that builds up when cutting. Blades like this will be used to make crosscuts in a wide range of products which include: cross cutting dry soft and hardwoods, plywood, Masonite® and raw MDF panels. Though the blade shown above is used on a table saw, slide compound miter saw or just a standard compound miter saw, you can find them in diameters to fit a standard circular saw. The other type of blade is called a ripping blade and it is used predominately for cutting with the grain in soft and hard woods. A rip blade’s design will have at least 24 teeth and the teeth will be ground with a “Triple Chip Ground”. Better ones will have expansion slots cut into them to help dissipate the heat that builds up when cutting. Blades like this will be used to make rips in products like dry soft and hardwoods. Now that you have an idea of the type saw and blade you should be using it’s time to talk about the actual techniques you’ll use to make the cuts. Having the proper equipment is just half the battle. This is the other half. The circular saw is a free hand or rough cutting tool meaning that it was designed to cut using just your hand and arm. That doesn’t mean you have to. If you are a skilled craftsperson you might think that you could free hand the cuts and that would be “good enough”, well they won’t. This is one of those tasks that’s need to be done as accurately as possible. So don’t cut any finished pieces free hand. The blades featured above are products from FSTOOL. I’ve been using their blades for many years in my table saws and CMS and have always been pleased with their performance and quality.

Using a Guide or Guide Rail System:

If you are using a standard circular you should use a guide rail to make the best possible cuts. This can be as simple as a level, 1x or any straight edge clamped on top of the work piece, or as elaborate as a Festool Guide Rail System. What matters is that your cuts are as clean, straight and square as possible. Now I’m not saying you need to run out and buy a “track saw system” just that you need to be aware that good cutting is a key element to getting good results.  One technique you can employ if you want to go one step past a 1x or level is to make a saw cutting guide from some ¼” Luan and that is what I’ll discuss here.

Making a Simple Guide Rail:

You can make a very accurate, simple and inexpensive guide rail just from a few pieces of ¼” luan plywood.  You might ask why ¼” and not some thicker material and the question would be a fair one. The reason is it will give you the greatest cutting depth for your saw as to not obstruct the motor when plunging down.

To make the guide rail begin by ripping a 6” to 8" wide piece of the luan from the full sheet.  Cut this from the side with the “best factory edge” and make it a full 96” long. The cut here doesn’t have to be perfect because you’ll be using the “factory edge” of this rip. Now you’ll square up the cut edge of the full sheet by align the ends of the ripped piece with the ends of the full sheet so that the factory edge is facing the cut edge on the full sheet. Move this rip back so that when you place the base of the saw against it will cut off about ½” of the sheet.  Use a pair of good quality spring clamps to hold the piece in place. If you don’t have spring clamps any clamp will do as long as they don’t interfere with the motor of the saw as you make the cut. Once the work pieces are secure make the cut. This will give you a new square clean edge on the sheet. At this point it would be fair to say that you could use a few ripped pieces in lengths of 8ft, 4ft and 3ft to make all of your cuts, and that would be just fine, but you can add a bit more accuracy to the jigs by adding one more step. That step would be to add an additional rip to each length of rip to guide the saw against and using the outside edge of the full rip as a cut line locator. The graphic to the left shows the completed saw guide. Using a setup like this you’ll be able to make clean accurate cuts which is always a good thing. Now you can process to cut all the countertop blanks and buildup required for your counter. Net we’ll talk about assembling the counter top.

Fabricating The Countertop:

After all the required pieces are cut for your countertop it’s time to assemble or fabricate it. This is just simply the process of joining the countertop blanks to conform to the sketch you’ve made and applying the buildups to them. This is where we’ll pick up in part two.