Cheap Countertop Made from Scrap 2x4's

[Music] big thank you to duck for sponsoring this video this week I am building some simple countertops for my laundry room earlier this year I renovated a shop building and in that process I demoed a room that yielded a ton of material that I denailed and threw into a pile know that you can definitely do this project with any wood of your choosing but I'm going with two by fours and two by sixes since I have an abundance of them you can pick at the beginning of this project whether you want your countertop looking uniformed and Flawless and if that's the case and you might buy new two by fours and pick up boards that are clear of knots or if you're like me and want a tad more rustic with character then I chose boards with more nail holes and a variety of links I threw my pickings on top of my deck system then quickly tied them down to head back to my shop I've had this deck system in the back of my truck for over a year now if you're not familiar death is a drawer system that keeps your tools safe from the weather and thieves and makes everything easy to access but it is much more than just yours for example let me tell you about the awesome tie down system it's based on two t-tracks that work with these ingenious little Rings you just slip the Rings into the tracks and position them anywhere along them instantly I have a strong tie-down point right where I need them and when I'm done hauling I toss the Rings and all my straps into one of the weather tight cubby holes super convenient you can check out all the decks systems and options at deck.com the first thing I did was move my mobile car to the side of my miter saw stand this is so that I can flip out the wing and pull my material directly from the cart to the saw and cut the ends whenever you're joining boards together you need all of the edges and ends to be at 90 and straight the miter takes care of the ends it's also at this step that you can cut your boards to length and I definitely recommend taking the measurement your top needs to be but then leaving yourself an extra inch or two you're going to cut it down perfectly later on next is to knock off the rounded edges of the material if you have a jointer then you can use it to get that one Edge flat and one face flat next I move the pretty large pile to my table saw oh hello totem here I make sure to place the jointed edge up against the table saw fence to get the second Edge parallel to it then I use the thickness planer to get the second base flat now if you don't have a jointer then one I'm going to leave you a link to two videos where I show you how to use a table saw or a router as a jointer but then two you can keep this project super simple and let it come out a little imperfect if you only have a table saw you can use it to cut off each rounded Edge and then leave the face alone this method will require more sanding and you might end up with a few small gaps but you can still build yourself some countertops okay after getting all of the materials square and straight I next laid out my boards to get the depth my countertop and shelf needed then started arranging them the first thing I do is line up one side of the boards to be in line with one another now my finished countertop will land about here but it's always best to make a bigger than needed slab then cut it down in the end next I look at the tree ring Direction and try to stagger them see how these Rings curve down this one is pretty Center but this one curves up then this one down what you want to avoid is all the Rings facing the same direction as that's going to promote the entire slap to cut in that direction whereas alternating them will oppose the forces the next thing I look at is where all the seams line up see how most all land right in this Zone I personally want a little more variety so what you can do is take a smaller board and place them at the front you just flip-flop the two boards and that will push the seam away from the others so after I did that with a few other rows now my seams were spaced out all across the slab okay the last thing I looked at before sticking things together was the butt joints you can see this joint does not close nicely and if it doesn't close nicely now it definitely won't once you put glue on it so take the time to recut both ends at the miter song okay now let's do the thing that probably causes the most stress in woodworking I'm talking about glue UPS it's common when you first start building a Big Slab like this to try and glue up all of the boards at one time however you learn really quick that it's way better to do multiple small glue UPS so that they come out right rather than brush it and mess it up or stress yourself out when you're gluing things together with yellow wood glue my go-to is dapped weld wood you typically have about three to four minutes of working time which is not a lot so have as many things ready to go as you can such as clamps brushes mallets and biscuits in my case which we can talk about next you can definitely cut all of your boards and just glue then clamp them together but where biscuits help is aligning the tops once you apply glue to two surfaces they're going to slip and slide and getting a perfectly flushed top is almost impossible by cutting in biscuit slots this tool references the top of each board to cut in the slot on each Edge so that when you insert a biscuit it's gonna automatically align each board and not allow it to slip around while applying pressure Alternatives that achieve the same thing are dowels or Domino but remember you can definitely glue up boards if you don't have any of them it will just require more flattening in The Next Step oh well it would be the next step but I added in another step see after Milling all of my boards my two by fours turned out to be only an inch and a quarter which is good but I personally wanted the look to be closer to two inches to achieve this I cut a nose that will be the thickness I want and simply attached it to the very front so know this is a trick you can use to make your glue up look thicker okay now let's start flattening this thing like everything in building there are several ways to do everything the countertop is too wide for my thickness planer so I did this by hand with my four inch belt sander you want to choose the widest bolt sander you have so that it's easier to keep it flat and not create divots I also like to turn my sander to a 45 on the first pass to hog away material faster then sand out the scuffs this creates in the lower grits at this point things are really close to being done so hang in there now I cut my top and shelf to their exact kneaded length I chose to use the sliding portion of my table saw to make this cut but a track saw or a circular saw with the fence would definitely work as well next I wanted to set the countertop in place and see how it was going to look up against my wall note that no wall is ever going to be perfectly straight so if you put something straight up against it you're going to have gaps you can cover up the Gap with a backsplash board or you can trace the exact shape of your wall onto the countertop and this is called scribing I did this with a carpenter's pencil but you can use just about anything as long as you keep it consistent once I had my line established you can either sand away up to it or cut it away [Music] okay and that is it for the technical building part but before installing it I went ahead and put on a coat of finish I'm using total boats gleam 2.0 which is a spar varnish that is super easy to use it does have a high gloss which I was going for here and one of my favorite features it is fast drying I like to use their Wood Sealer varnish primer beforehand which does a really great job at filling in the green to create an even smoother finish to install the countertop I simply crawled inside and screwed it through some wooden scrap strips I screwed into place then for the Shelf up here I screwed in a cleat to the corner where I knew there was going to be Framing and then cut in a receiving Notch to the shelf so that it could sit right on top but then also give me something to screw down into then the left terminates right into the cabinet so that I could go to the inside and throw a few screws into the end grain all right and I'm going to call this another project done I'm going to leave you links to videos showing you how to build cabinets and also me installing these in case you have a similar project on your hands I really hope that this video has given you some good tips or inspiration if you have building cheap countertops on your to-do list I'll see on whatever I'm building next [Music] [Music] one yeah this one yay you happy Bubba no you don't even care

Channel: April Wilkerson

Views: 238,920

Keywords: Cheap countertops, inexpensive countertops, DIY countertops, low cost countertops, Wood countertops, reclaimed wood, butcher block, kitchen countertops, bathroom countertops, bathroom vanity, laundry room, small laundry room makeover, laundry room cabinets, cabinets, laundry room shelf, woodworking, laundry room ideas, scribe a countertop, DAP, rock solid countertop, total boat

Id: 08qOh1RkyR0

Length: 8min 55sec (535 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 25 2022