DIY Epoxy Countertop Success? Tips and Lessons from Making Faux Marble Counters over Plywood

hey guys i'm tyler and welcome back to the channel today we are going to attempt to pour some epoxy countertops so this is actually after we poured them and yes they actually turned out fairly well they are still wet right now with the clear top coat but they turned out pretty well some lessons learned along the way so i hope you guys enjoy the video i have known people to fabricate counter tops like this using mdf or particle board i've only used particleboard in the past with great success so that is all that i can really recommend we brought in our three-quarter inch sheets of particle board and there is one corner in this kitchen that is unsupported dad doesn't like lazy susan so this is just an empty gap in the far corner so we need to support that with some two by fours we brought in our particle board and as you can see here the corner is not really 90 degrees so we needed to run a scribe line and i'm using a compass here this is from fast cap and i'm just showing that you need to make sure you're consistent with how you hold the thing so that you get your consistent line once we had that scribe line we brought our particle board outside again we moved it in and out a lot in making this project and then we cut that scribe line using a jigsaw just follow close to the line and that's pretty much all you need to do then guess what we brought it back in and as you can see it lines up against the wall much much better then to make our cuts along the front of the cabinets i actually use the cabinets themselves to make some marks so that i could use my track saw later on to make those cuts we do want an inch and a half offset or overhang over those cabinets so i'm using a tape measure to extend the lines that i just drew using the cabinets to make those marks previously and now i can line my craig track saw right up on that line and plunge cut right through super easy to do with this track song but again this particle board makes a mess and yes i don't need everyone to tell me that i should be wearing a respirator or a mask didn't have one in the car and we are two hours away from the house which is where uh my shop is so yes i would highly recommend a respirator but you got to do what you gotta do sometimes okay much sawdust later particle board is nasty stuff we have everything cut up and laid out how we want it minus a couple strips that will go in the back corner there for supports so over here on the peninsula with the bar we are doing 100 double layer of three-quarter inch particle board to give us lots of strength and then on the long strips over here and over by the stove there we took the off cut cut it in half and we will use that to support underneath giving us the inch and a half in the front and obviously the support on the back going to start flipping things over now and gluing them up and it's kind of a jigsaw pattern to make sure we get it right but i think it's going to go okay lots of screws from the bottom to hold everything together and i will be using type on three because it is waterproof although we should never get any water underneath there once the epoxy is on there you do want everything to be clean before you sandwich the boards together but it's not as critical at this point in the process as it is before doing the epoxy but anyway easy enough to clean it up with shopvac in a rag to make sure we got big specs of dust off there and then we use titebond three uh you don't necessarily need type on three but it is waterproof if water somehow happen to get in there but it does just give us a little bit more open time and i've also found that tight bond three flows around a little bit better as it's a little bit more it's a little bit less viscous i guess so it's easier to spread around we added screws through the bottom so you won't see them or translate them through the epoxy and then we flip that over and ran everything up against the wall this is a bar section like i said this is going to be double layer all the way through and then the sections that go against the wall and around the corner we actually took the off cut since it was about 26 inches wide that we wanted for the countertop we took that off cut and cut it in half leaving a gap in the middle where we don't really need the support and this saved us several sheets of particle board once we've got the glue and screws on this bad boy it was time to flip it over and it is a pretty big awkward piece so go slowly so that you don't lose it and snap all the hard work you've put into it so far you can see here how the peninsula of the kitchen is kind of fitting together so that we have again that solid two sections for the bar area that will overhang not too bad to fasten the countertop down we shot some pocket holes through the cabinet sides where we had drilled some pocket holes previously to hold the entire thing down to the kitchen cabinets and time to cut a hole for the kitchen sink which is no big deal with a decent jigsaw although cutting through the inch and a half solid particle board does take some time and just like with everything with particle board it's a disaster so we try to keep dust down to a minimum using the shopvac hole's monstrous but exactly the size we need yeah we couldn't it could have made it smaller eighth inch all the way around as we get further in the video you'll see that the steps we're doing right now turned out to be a total waste time because we had to cut these down to 45 degree angles but we'll get to that later on in the video anyway slow cuts with the jigsaw clean it up with the belt sander to get your nice radius and then the belt sander on the edge of the particle board to make sure any glue squeeze out or rough edges are removed so that we get a smooth flow of epoxy over the edge again this turns into a moot point later and we will touch base when we get over to that i also added a slight round over using my trim router all the way around just so that you don't have to lean up against a sharp corner when everything is said and done and now it is time to make sure that everything is nice and clean so that we don't have any dirt or specks of dust that are going to translate through our seal coat of epoxy this video has been brought to us by total boat epoxies from jamestown distributors and we are going to be using their tabletop epoxy formula for these countertops big shout out to them for supplying us with the epoxy for this project there's a lot of it you can find out more about them links down in the description below again this is just a thin layer that we rolled out to seal the particle board so that big air bubbles don't translate through to the thicker coats that we need to put on later the torch just removes any bubbles from there causing them to rise to the top of the epoxy and to pop and this just again smooth things out for later another lesson learned from this project is it would have been smart to paint the particle board the base color of the epoxy that we are going to have as our finished countertop color and even to tint that seal coat of epoxy the color that we want to add more depth and allow us to pour a thinner coat later on in the countertop build so lessons learned something that we will know for later on when we do another epoxy countertop like this in the close-up there you saw some of the bubbles that still translated through the epoxy so we hit everything with a sander and then cleaned it all up very thoroughly with a wet rag to make sure no dust was left on there when we're doing our color code which is coming up here want to make sure you tape everything off very very well so that you don't get any epoxy running away off the edges on you and don't forget about the inside of the sink now in the video it looks like we slapped some color in the epoxy mixed it up and ready to go that was not the case we actually went through two gallons of epoxy sampling different formulas and ratios before coming up with something that we liked which was a combination of what is called a dirty pore epoxy and then adding some accent fissure lines we gathered everything together to mix it up and you'll see some odd things in there like spray paint and some trouts why do we need that kind of stuff but the dirty pore you actually use a shot of spray paint it can be any color you want we decided to go with white because it left some white dots amongst the countertop which look really really cool and apparently the spray paint kind of separates the colors a little bit so they don't all blend together a lesson learned after doing this would be to add even more spray paint than what we did but again on to the next countertop make sure you mix very thoroughly using your drill try not to mix in a ton of air bubbles if you can help it and we are actually using paint as the pigment for the base color because this was the only way we could find the color that we were after in an easy ratio to replicate again and again so we pour that in adding more or less paint didn't really seem to make a difference although you don't want to add a ton because it can make the epoxy a little bit too liquidy now as you notice we are only pouring one color right now this is a thinner layer of epoxy about a sixteenth of an inch thick and i believe what we're doing if you get all scientific is breaking down the molecular boundary of the epoxy giving a liquid base that we're going to pour our dirty pour over allowing everything to smooth out a little bit easier for a glassy countertop when all is said and done the process is the same that v-notch trial actually worked fantastic to spread out and leave a very smooth even layer so i would highly recommend one of those and then the torch again to pop the bubbles and then warming up the epoxy a little bit with the torch you want to make sure you don't settle in one spot allows it to even out a little bit better as well and now we are getting ready for the dirty pour mix up a bucket of your base gray color and then in some smaller buckets we are adding a different shade of gray metallic and then we are going to be doing a copper metallic as well you want to make sure with a color like this that you add enough pigment otherwise you'll get some clear clear lines in there as well with the epoxy mix then the dirty pore part is actually really really cool you want to add a majority of your base layer between each section so not a majority of the bucket but of each layer you want a majority of the base color and then you are going to pour in squiggly lines just like i have done here your accent colors and then you are going to separate those layers with your spray paint and we're using a shop vac just to make sure any over spray gets sucked up instead of going around the house and then we're adding layer after layer after layer until all of our epoxy is in the bucket and we are ready to go you do not want to mix up your bucket of dirty poor epoxy you want to leave the layers just as they are and then start in any pattern you want across your countertop with an even pore going off the edge so that the natural fissure lines that are going to come flowing out of the bucket go off the edge in a natural manner here you can see we're trying to go kind of diagonally across the countertops and leave that same pattern all the way across and not mix things up too terribly the camera doesn't really do it justice there is more color in this epoxy poured countertop but again you can't really see it in the camera picture and we are going to accent them with our accent colors adding some fisher lines and you'll see that in just a moment again we're running over everything quickly with the torch just to make sure we have the bubbles out of the epoxy and like i mentioned before it helps things smooth out a little bit quicker and give a more even flow and here we are adding our accent fisher lines using our two accent colors that we mixed up previously and you can do this however you want some of them we put along the edge of the puddles of dirty poor some of them we put right in the middle and as you can see looks pretty sweet the cool thing with this is even if you get something a little bit squiggly you get something a little bit too big you can go back with a stick and kind of flatten it or smoosh it out again and then everything will flow back together obviously you want to make sure you're not too far in the process where the epoxy is actually setting up when you do that speaking of setting up we need to remove that tape off of the boundaries at some point in time and you want to do this at a point where the epoxy is not flowing off the top anymore but is kind of sticky you still want it to flow down off the edge but you don't want it to completely run off of the countertop and leave an uneven surface on there so you can see it's kind of sticky it will slowly drip down the edge but it's not going to come blasting off the top and waterfall over the edge well that was a great monologue of how you should do it and those go back to the lessons that we learned from pouring this countertop most specifically having to do with the edge if we would have painted the particle board and tinted the base layer of epoxy i think we would have been good and gotten full coverage on this edge but we didn't do those things so we have a little bit of fixing to do to make sure that edge is the deep color that we're after at this time our epoxy countertops have cleared they're looking pretty fantastic but we knew coming back up here that we had a little bit of an issue with the edges here as you can see we didn't get the covering that we wanted lesson learned that we should have painted the the substrate under here the base color of gray before getting started and we probably would have been just fine so the plan so that we can be done today is that we're going to take these edges down using the power planer hand plane sander and etc down to the bare wood and we're going to glue on this is a hickory edge that's painted the base color and then we will pour the final clear coat of epoxy on the top of that and that'll fill in any gap that you see right here and we should be good to go we may come back and brush an epoxy over the edge of this for extra protection uh just so you don't bang the edge it is hickory should be pretty stable hopefully that works out as planned and everything will be done here but it is looking pretty good if you just look at the top so yeah let's make a disaster in the kitchen here cutting all of these edges back down to the bare wood so we get good glue adhesion and yes i already know i should be having a respirator on but i forgot it two hours away so you gotta do what you gotta do anyway with the power planer hand planer and belt sander we got all of the edges down to the bare wood making sure we had nice 90 degrees on the inside and crispy 45s on the outside to cut those 45s i used a router with a flush trim bit and i used a safe cut ruler from fast cap and a buddy of mine's invention izzy swan this actually hooks over that safe cut ruler and allows you to make kind of a track saw type of thing and i just use my cordless trim router to whack those corners down to 45 degrees and this allows us to use miter cuts instead of trying to bend something around which obviously would not work with hickory again we're using titebond three in this situation and we're using a shim to space this edging up a sixteenth of an inch which is what the thickness of the clear coat is that we want to pour on the top of the entire counter and this is a trick i've used when doing past laminate edging is to actually use clear packing tape as your clamp to hold the edging into place you can kind of stretch it out and clamp everything down nice and firmly and we wrapped this hickory which was painted in the base coat of grayish all the way around and it looks pretty sweet not the perfect situation but it was the lemons that we had to work with and i think we came up with some pretty tasty looking lemonade and while we had a beautifully smooth and glossy coat you want to sand down right here so that you get a good bond between the two coats of epoxy i sanded with 240 grit sandpaper make sure you change it regularly so that you don't get any big swirls on the top of your epoxy some water and rag makes quick cleanup of all of the epoxy dust on top of the countertops then it was back to mixing up about a gallon and a half of clear total boat tabletop epoxy and again this was just completely clear and we poured it out in about a sixteenth of an inch thickness which again is the height that we offset the edging using the spacers back when we're putting everything in place we want to pour it on trial everything out so it's nice and smooth and then again go back with the torch to warm the epoxy up a little bit and smooth everything out and that's another tip that i forgot to mention is we made sure that the room was 70 plus degrees and that the epoxy was at least 70 degrees before we started and that just allowed things to smooth out and flow evenly so that we had the flattest countertop possible as of right now we have left the epoxy as is which is nice and shiny and honestly feels a little bit sticky because i think it's so smooth but you can certainly polish this off later on and that will give you a nice slippery shiny surface something that we might do later on all right we are done with the countertops obviously we have some things to do like putting the sink in before they are completely done but we are certainly done for today and they are looking pretty fabulous there's two coats of epoxy on here as you saw the dirty pour that we put on there and then the clear coat that we just finished putting on and it is looking pretty awesome obviously we had some lessons learned in pouring this countertop so i hope that helped you guys out if it did please hit that thumbs up button as it helps us out and gets this video in front of more eyes i'm diy tyler you guys have a good one

Channel: DIYTyler

Views: 46,839

Rating: 4.9137468 out of 5

Keywords: diy epoxy countertop, diy epoxy countertop faux marble, diy epoxy countertop for beginners, diy epoxy countertop mdf, diy epoxy countertop over plywood, diy epoxy countertop spray paint, diy epoxy, diy epoxy countertops, diy epoxy resin, diy epoxy table, epoxy countertop diy, countertop epoxy, countertop finishing kit, diy countertops, epoxy countertops, epoxy countertops tips and lessons, totalboat countertop epoxy, diytyler, faux marble, stone coat countertops, resin art

Id: NWxnMWBibLU

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021