Here you can see a bit of a gap between the countertop and waterfall side. We brought the slabs into the kitchen (the island top was not fully attached yet) and dry-fit them into place.Ī closer look at the finished underside waterfall edge. Here are the finished fronts of both waterfall sides. Slowly using shims to separate the countertop from the melamine surface: Rewinding a bit, prior to finishing the “undersides” we did remove the slab from the melamine and flip it to finish the “front side”. (Especially when backlit from the windows). I would have rejected this if this was for a top of a countertop, but I think it won’t be as noticeable under the island. This isn’t a perfect result, but it will be placed under the island where your legs go and will be hidden by the stools a little. The severely chipped slab turned out better than I thought it would. The slab that looked decent from the beginning had a pretty good result. The slurry coat really looks dark compared to the countertop, but they were both colored with the same percentage of black oxide powder.Īfter the underside slurry coat dried and was sanded… we flipped the slabs, applied a slurry coat, let them dry, sanded, and finished the front side (with TK6 NanoCoat finish). We then flipped them back to the underside (protecting them with cardboard) and finished the original underside as well. The slurry coat does not contain sand or any fibers, so the thiner gloves are acceptable to use in this situation. (Again, this is abnormal for a regular one-sided countertop). We applied the “slurry coat” to the exposed backside of the slab. Here you can see a bit of the glass fibers (pva – which “disappear” more effectively – were used on the opposite front side) and a few air holes. The difference between the concrete with just the angle grinder versus sanding. We were keeping the slab in the mould so we could gauge the proper depth of the slab. This is just a quick rundown, for more on the “finishing” process visit this blog post Part 6: Finishing. The slab that has been ground on the left and not on the right (with the smooth “board covered area” to the extreme right:Īfter the angle grinder, multiple sheets of sanding paper are used for a even smoother surface. Making sure everything is as even as possible with a straight edge: (With a normal countertop, the slab would be flipped to the front side at this point and finished). Next up: bring the whole thing outside and knock down the high points with the angle grinder:īecause this is a two-sided waterfall countertop, Spencer continues to refine the portion that will be visible. This is an example of the same slab: the smoother side is where we applied the extra board (you can see where the concrete kind-of oozed over the edge) and the normal, compacted concrete side (with the waffle texture). Here, we will be finishing this part of the “underside” because they will be exposed. (The thickness of the slab was still acceptable even with a little additional grinding.) Normally, the undersides of the countertops are ground down just enough to ensure they are level, but are then left unfinished. In general though, the slab looked fine, we just had to grind off the flaky bits. We have no idea what happened unfortunately – there could have been a mis-measurement of components somewhere along the way. One turned out fairly well, while the other did not for some reason – the result was a flaky mess. Here Spencer is unscrewing the extra board after the waterfall sides have cured. (I should mention, the countertops are made face down.) Here’s were things changed a little from the typical countertops: we added an additional piece of melamine to the top aka backside of the slabs to hopefully help create a smoother surface. For more on this process, visit Part 4 and Part 5 blog posts. We sprayed on the “beauty coat” (which contained pva fibers) and continued layering in and compacting concrete reinforced with glass fiber. For more on this process visit the blog post Part 2 on templates & forms. We created forms based on the templates and made out of melamine. Here, you can see the portion of the waterfall edge that will be exposed (and therefore needs to be finished) where the stools will sit. We started by making a template for the two sides: nothing is going to be perfectly square, so the template will give us the best fit. The waterfall sides are made the exact same way as the other concrete countertops… but there is one exception: they will have a portion of their backsides finished as well. After a nice hiatus from countertops, we still had to finish up the entire project by making matching concrete waterfall sides for our kitchen island.
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