Epoxy Countertops with built in LEDs and infused Glow in the Dark patterns

thank you [Applause] foreign [Music] so I'm going to be doing the epoxy countertop for this kitchen and the first thing I did here was lay down three quarter CDX plywood I got everything to the shape that I want and for this joint here I ended it right here because the two cabinets are right here so there's actually two walls right here so that's nice and supported there and there's going to be a dishwasher right there there's going to be a stove right there so I also came in with a 45 on each Corner that was going to be sticking out so on the island it's all four and then there's that one right there and there's that one right there just so we don't have a sharp corner for somebody to hit their head on like kids playing around or something I got an eight inch overhang here I was gonna go a little bit more than that but eight inches is fine if you're sitting underneath this with a stool there's plenty of room for you to stick your knees out I probably could have gone 12 inches but I didn't know how strong it would be with this plywood I could also support it with some flat pieces of like quarter inch steel but looking at how wide this island is already I just don't think that we really need that much space on here because this is almost four feet as it is it's like 46 inches so the next step after this is to add some MDF on top of this which is like a particle board they make it with sawdust and glue and I actually hate working with MDF I don't like MDF at all but in this case it's a good match for countertops because it's super flat and it's super smooth and as long as you keep it waterproof which the epoxy will do you shouldn't have any problems with it swelling up which is why I hate it so much but like I said the good thing about MDF is that it does lay flat this plywood doesn't lay flat at all you can see this is all over the place I'm gonna fasten it down to the cabinets but the first thing I'm going to do is lay the MDF on top of this I have an inch and a half of overhang on all sides that are sticking out anyways except for next to the stove there so what I'm going to do now is lay the MDF on top of this and trace it out so it's exactly the same as this and I don't have to add my inch and a half anymore I just do it exactly the same size and since I have a joint here with the MDF I'm going to bring the sheet in like this so that there's a joint here and then there's going to be a joint here which I'm going to cut it short so there's a joint here it wants to fall somewhere's in here but I don't want that joint over top of the dishwasher because that's just going to be a weak spot so I'll cut it back to here put a new piece in here and over here I have two cabinets butting up so there's two walls so I'll rest one on one wall one on the other and even if you just get it close to that that's good enough too instead of having a joint right over top of this cabinet a few inches out which would be fine but I just rather not and I don't have to in this case so I'm not gonna so I'm gonna have a full sheet going the other way partial piece there a partial piece there and then that's going to be the same and this is going to be the same I'm also going to add some supports in this corner here because it is a big span here so I'm going to add like a joist going across maybe even two going diagonal so the whole trick with this is you want a nice smooth surface on the top and the CDX plywood doesn't do that so you got all this stuff going on and it's just in general it's just not a smooth surface so you could fill in all the different imperfections with like Bondo or something but I'm just not gonna get into that so I got this synced already a few months ago and it's a little bit fancier than a normal sink it's a little bit wider and it's a little bit deeper and I had to make that cabinet 40 inches they require 39 but I made it 40 inches normally a cabinet for a sink is typically 36 inches so I had to make it a little bit bigger for this one because it is wider so I love under mount sinks so I made sure to get an under mount and they provide you with this template so that you can trace it out exactly how it should be so that it's flush to the sink wall which is really convenient because trying to get that perfect without a template like this you can do it but it takes a lot longer this is just really quick and streamlined and they give you the center marks too so that you can line it up pretty easily just draw it out and cut it out so all I need to do is find my Center marks going both ways and slap that on there maybe put a couple pieces of tape on so it doesn't move around and trace it out foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] all right so the next step is going to seem odd and it might not make sense to some people but I want to infuse some LEDs into this countertop so what I'm gonna do is on the CDX plywood the three quarter inch that's going to go on the bottom I'm gonna cut out little like slivers just random slivers here and there and I'm gonna cut those out and I'm gonna paint the edge of the inside of it like a lighter color I don't know whatever I have laying around just something lighter not black just to seal the edge and then I'm going to take those slivers seal them up from the bottom and I'm going to pour some epoxy in them just clear and let that sit but before I pour the epoxy in it I'm going to trace it out onto the MDF and cut that out as well so that they're both cut and then I'll fill in those spots with the epoxy in the CDX let that set up take off the stuff from the bottom which I'm gonna probably need to use like a board on the bottom with some wax paper or something and then I'll take that off sand it down on the bottom and since the stuff that I got you can only pour it three quarters of an inch thick I'm just going to pour the bottom layer and then I'll put the MDF on top of that once it's dried and then I'll glue and screw the two layers together and then I'll pour the clear epoxy on the MDF part of it which I have to seal around the edges the same thing first just so that you don't see like the edge of the wood when you look through it so I think I explained those in the right order it took me a little while to kind of figure this out but but the goal is basically to have an inch and a half thick clear epoxy that goes right through the countertop and then I can put LED lights on the bottom of that and the reason I want to do that instead of putting it in with the epoxy is because then you could never replace it so I want it to go all the way through to the bottom of the countertop so basically before I put the LEDs in you should be able to look down into the cabinet kind of it's not super clear like that but at least it'll let light through anyways [Music] oh [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] all right so the plan right now is to paint these edges just around here and maybe a little bit on the bottom side like a lighter color I'm going to use whatever paint I have laying around might even be like a lightish blue I'm not sure I might have some white though but I'm going to paint those surfaces just so they're sealed up and so that they reflect the light better so this is the bottom of the sheet so the light will reflect up through there and it'll bounce off those walls once I paint these edges then I'm going to take some silicone and run it around the outside of it pretty close pretty tight and then put some wax paper on top of that and then on top of the wax paper I'm going to put just some half inch plywood with a few screws in it so that'll seal the surface the wax paper won't stick to the resin and the wax paper won't stick to the silicone and then tomorrow once it's dry I can just unscrew the screws I can just take off the wax paper and maybe take a putty knife or something and just get all the silicone off and then I can just sand it lightly down just so it's even and it should be good to go so it should be a pretty streamlined process I just need to get these painted so they can get drying so that I can continue on with the rest of it foreign thank you foreign so these are ready to pour the clear epoxy it's hard to estimate how much I'm going to need for this ultimately though it doesn't need to be flush with the top as long as I got enough in there to stop stuff from going down that's really all I care about even if there was just like a quarter inch on the bottom then I could take the stuff off like the plywood and the wax paper and all that stuff off and then I can actually set these which is kind of the goal so at this point I'm just trying to make a barrier to hold the epoxy because I'm going to have to pour another layer or maybe even two layers on top of this once the MDF is on here and everything else so these aren't sitting perfectly level because of those pieces of plywood you can see like it's humped up like half an inch over there half an inch over there and so it's not going to be perfectly level inside of here but that's okay as long as there's a barrier that's all I care about [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's a lot more clear than I thought it would be we might have to add a little bit of like white to the next round just because you can see like there's some wrinkles in the wax paper and stuff and I'm sure that's going to show up once we kick it off actually there's a lot of wrinkles I didn't think that this stuff would be so clear but who knows maybe it'll fog up once it dries but just in case it doesn't I can just add a little bit of white to the next round and that should take care of that should make it not so translucent I mean I like the fact that it's clear but at the same time I don't want to see all the imperfections in it plus we're still going another three quarters of an inch actually probably almost an inch because a lot of this is only half an inch in here but that's fine half an inch is fine I'd rather not have it overflowing over the top foreign foreign [Music] perfect foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you foreign [Music] did you catch a tiny little Bullhead yeah look at that we'll go ahead we only put three bullheads in there so I guess they're doing their job and then we got I got a turtle look at that now we got a bunch of bullheads and I I caught a turtle yeah okay look uh I want to show you that Noah look it's got like damage on it and on the bottom too and then look it's got like beautiful red colors all right back to work okay all right [Music] foreign so screwing these from the underside was a tedious and painful task but it is done now so it's behind me getting into the cabinets reaching up underneath and screwing it from underneath it's not easy but it can be done and like I said I was gonna take this out and flip it upside down and then screw up but I don't know I just got caught up in the moment same thing with this one so I just ended up screwing all of them from underneath so now that I have this nice rounded bullnose Edge I'm gonna make that look even nicer by putting some Bondo on it letting that dry and then sanding it down and I'll probably do that a few times make this look really nice that's the neat thing about this kind of countertop versus like a concrete countertop is that you can take all the time you want to make it look perfect before you put the epoxy on there's no sense in rushing anything just keep going over it and if you sand it too deep you just put some more Bondo on sand it again foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] these edges but it's getting late so before I go to bed I want to make sure that I pour another layer inside of these but that edge is coming out pretty good all the edges are coming out pretty good I just need to do a little bit more work and tomorrow we will be ready to pour later on in the day [Music] all right [Music] so I'm at the point now where everything is shaped the way I want sanded down so now what I'm doing is just applying this undercoat it's an epoxy undercoat putting two coats of that on it's kind of like a primer it seals the wood up and makes the epoxy stick better so I'm just painting around the spots that I need to cut in and then I'll roll the rest of it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right so that's what it looks like when it's almost ready to pour no I just gotta let it dry mask off the sides to make a tape down and then it's ready to pour foreign see what happens is this little concave will store a bunch of stuff and that'll be enough to bring it down the face of it okay [Applause] so we are all ready to pour the plan here is I'm gonna put some clear epoxy in the middle I'm going to put a little bit more than I think I need that way when I take this Dam off if anything the clear will flow out but what I'm also going to do just in case is I'm gonna put a translucent blue around like a ring around it and that translucent blue is actually a glow in a dark blue so it'll be cool because it'll have a ring of glow in the dark going around it and if for some reason the blue goes into that area at least it'll be translucent and it's lighter than everything else because the theme of these is going to be black but there's going to be different colors but I don't want any black to get into there so I'm going to come out with a ring of the translucent blue which is glow in the dark blue and then I'm going to do black outside of that so the black is quite a ways from these spots and I'm going to try to match up what I did upstairs in the shower sort of to the best of my ability anyways so we've still got our silver our Blue Pearl pewter and this is the new blue glow powder and then I got more pewter and more Blue Pearl and then I also got my black dye and I got white dye too so these are very very strong like one drop is enough to mix up this whole thing like four drops is enough for two gallons it's that strong so we got many different container sizes this is two gallons so I'll probably start out mixing a full two gallons of clear this is a half a gallon so I'll probably dump out enough to fill this up and that'll be just for the places that are going to have the LED lights hopefully that's enough and then we'll also break it down into smaller sections with these cups for all the different colors and we'll put black and white in these half a gallon cups as well so I got four gallons all together according to the specs we should only need three gallons so we'll have some left over I still need to do the backsplash but I don't want to do that right now because it's just too much going on I can do that at a different day and I can save some of these colors and just sort of match it that way there's not so much pressure I can lay them out on this table and get them the way I want without having to worry about everything else going on at the same time foreign so I'd say we need to mix another gallon so we'll keep whatever's left in here for whatever you might need might be clear I don't know [Music] [Music] I think it's a little lighter too blue glow I have not seen this one yet maybe it doesn't really change colors let me just glows blue I mean the powder doesn't really have that much of a glue to it yeah I guess I could put a little bit of blue pearl in there yeah well that even works better for my plan then because the is going to be right around the clear stuff so it'll be clear you know I don't want to put too much of it down to be too much of a clear spot I almost just use this I'm gonna say yeah I almost should use that and then the queer you can do you put any all you want in it that's white but we're gonna have to label that one oops I don't know there's some blue in there what do you mean this is the white now oh I see what had happened I thought you meant skip outer was white [Music] you should almost put like a drop of silver in there or something use it like just yeah just a couple Flex good to darken it up that's smooth yeah that's similar to that one yeah okay just a little bit more or something what did you do is pewter yeah I'll just do a tap good yeah it's been a very very small drought on this black in there that out of there [Music] is definitely darkened it up like wow foreign colors yep that black is super super strong dude and now we can do white quiet [Music] ly looks so similar I think we should almost do something like put white in one or something yeah yeah I would put a little white in the silver let's do it back to the silver um [Music] another another drop oh I put it down in this stuff I put this down in that puddle and stuff right there [Music] yeah that's a little better that's a lot more silvery than the silver let's see grip it luckily it's clear so again it's not that big of a deal see some colors seeping into it but it shouldn't you know what we should almost do is kind of flood that area with just a little bit more color I don't know I think it'll equalize out in a second I was gonna say maybe you just pour a little bit of clear in there yeah like that right there yeah well you got it it's really warm it'll also push the colors back too yeah cool just set that window oh I'm just gonna say just set it where the single goes yep that is really warm chemical reaction I'm gonna come over here it's definitely pretty low I think get this in there as soon as possible [Music] perfect well I think dams worked next to it though yeah done what do we got left here over here I say you should mix up uh I think we only got a little bit for uh black and then the glow blue to go around the things yeah so uh that's clear I mean clear could be whatever yeah but I'd rather have the blue the blue and blue around silver I think we'll just do the blue glow for around the thing and then the rest is black yep and then black you want to just hold that and let it drip yep we have to mix up a little bit more it's not a good deal yeah just fill in any spots that are blank that's what I'm trying to get at better not let's have a smear it like [Music] dollars [Applause] everything so far has actually built on the surface and it also looks a lot different once it starts setting up and it levels out again of course we kept doing the island last when it should have been first and that's like the feature in the air it's definitely much more exotic looking than everything else more smeared they just like drag it through just don't have any Rhyme or Reason to do it though wherever foreign [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] you also got to break the surface tension on this thing too and let it smear down hold on I don't have too much really save some of this if I really need something I can use this [Applause] foreign [Applause] a little bit flow a little bit better but I don't want to smear that design too much [Music] [Applause] I'm just gonna walk right in it foreign I think I should almost let it run just a few more seconds you can see how cool it is though because the colors on the edge just drip right down and it makes it look really cool especially right here thank you [Laughter] [Music] huh seriously what is with you guys in this charcoal you sleep in it you eat it they like that charcoal so much so we come here Pearl Zoe Pearl what are you doing Pearl come here Ralph all right what do you want just looking for a patent oh now Ralph wants the pens and mouse catcher 5000. [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] foreign well it's a few days later and these are looking really good so I put some LED lights in here just to temporarily see how it would look and looks great so I still got to hook up all the LED lights inside of these cabinets but I just wanted to do that just to see how much light would shine through and I'm really happy with the amount of light that shines through I had this on last night and it lit up the whole room just those two little spots right there you could see everything in here it's like a nice night light but once I get those hooked up it'll be even better so I was going to put a matte finish on all these which is like a dull finish which I really like especially on kitchen counters because it makes it like pop more I just personally like the matte finish a lot more than a glossy look but everyone else said to leave it glossy so I guess that's what I'm gonna do because I can always put matte finish on later if I want to but I think once you put on matte finish it's hard to put the gloss on there so so I already have the matte finish top coat but it seems how everybody doesn't really want that anymore we're going to go with the glossy I'm gonna get a different top coat but it's going to take like a week or more to come in the mail so in the meantime it's not going to look any different than what it is right now so I don't see any point in waiting for it for you guys to see it because it's going to look exactly identical to what it is right now it's just going to be a lot more durable once I put that Copco on it's the ultimate top coat by Stone coat countertops so the few things left that I'm going to do to wrap up this video is going to be to make a backsplash for this and I'm going to install the rest of the LED lights and I'm going to install the sink that way you guys can kind of have more of a completed look by the time I get done here so I'm going to take a piece of 1 by 3 which is three quarters of an inch thick and two and a half inches wide and that's what we're going to use as a backsplash normally you'd use a 1x4 but a 1 by 4 is gonna impede on this Outlet right here and all the trim in this house has been a one by three anyway so that'll be fine we're gonna mix up some more of this epoxy use the same exact colors get the same kind of design same kind of concept and we're just going to make them sort of match what's already here I'm not going to worry about like where these designs end and where the designs start on the backsplash or anything like that we're just going to use the same colors and just in general it should look sort of like it belongs there [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] all right so I got some lights hooked up first of all I got these under cabinet lights and these are really bright like they exceeded my expectations like tenfold you can't even see the colors in the countertop right now that's up right there but let me show you that too foreign let me turn the main lights off here and show you what it's all about how cool is that you know these GoPros don't really do good in dark it's not really doing Justice right now but this is really cool it lights up everything in here and one of the coolest features that you guys haven't even seen yet is the fact that all this glows in dark when you turn this off I highly doubt the camera is going to pick it up but let's try it anyways oh man I wish you guys could see this these countertops are lit up right now got to be a way I could show this I'm going to figure out a way where I could show you guys this in the next video all right guys you can kind of see what's going on here I'm using a night vision scope they're monoculars that I keep on at 10 22. but you can detach them so there's the corner right there you can kind of see the glow in the dark I mean you can see it but it's really low quality it's a little spots there then here's the island super low quality video here but you get the idea that's that little cabinet towards the stairs after I saw a stone coat countertops do this on one of their countertops in their personal home I just had to do it I wasn't going to do an epoxy countertop without doing it I was originally just going to do the island but then I thought you know what let's just spend a few extra hours maybe another 100 or 200 and let's just do all the countertops I'm so happy that we did this this is really neat the kids are going to love this they haven't even seen I just hooked it up they saw this but they're in bed right now but they haven't seen any of this and the glow-in-the-dark thing is really cool because that's like at night time it lights up the kitchen because there's like a big swath of glow-in-the-dark around this whole thing and then there's like little patches here and there this patch right here is glow in the dark and then some of these little streaks it's not just here and here I put it in all different spots so it's really neat I gotta find a way to show you guys you're gonna love it it's cool it's really neat this sink is awesome I love the faucet and the sink just the whole setup I just love it and the way this came out right here that is so neat I'm loving this kitchen guys I was really hesitant on doing this epoxy countertop I really wanted something nice like granite or marble but you know I probably saved seven or eight grand by doing this and there's no way I would have been able to have the lights in there or the glow in the dark or the colors that I wanted or the style that I wanted there's no way I would have gotten anywheres near that with natural stone and I would have paid so much more for it so this was definitely definitely the way to go without a doubt like I would definitely do this again I didn't really like the glossy look but it's growing on me and like I said if we decide that we want to go with a matte finish I can easily do that I was going to use the LED strips underneath these cabinets to do the under cabinet light or the over counter light whatever you want to call it but they just weren't bright enough I put them on there just temporarily to see and they just weren't bright enough so I ended up getting These Bars and I can't remember I think these are like 2 000 lumens a piece or something maybe even more it's way more than I expected and if you're on the countertop like cutting food up or something it definitely does the job I was definitely really worried about this opening because having an under mount sink means that this Edge is exposed and you got to make it really nice but it came out really good like I said you gotta just take your time because you have all the time in the world you don't have to pour until you're ready once you're ready to pour and you start the process you definitely want to make sure that you got everything in line but you can see that these edges came out really good and then you got the colors flowing down like that that's really neat and it's so easy to accomplish that too now again just like upstairs I think this is a little bit too busy for my liking and of course it's the island so it's the main feature but I definitely still like it you know it's just a little too busy for for my likings but this counter is perfect I love the way that came out it's not too busy it's just perfect and this one is pretty good too a little bit busy a little bit too much color there but that one came out pretty good but overall even with this being busy I'm super happy with it all right guys well that's it for this video I got a lot of stuff accomplished and a lot of it I didn't even show you like with all the lights going on and all the electric I had to do and stuff to get to that point but definitely closing in on this kitchen and the next thing I'm going to do is going to be the panels for all the doors and I got all the materials I need for that and I got some more glow blue and we're going to use that a lot more in the doors and that's going to be really neat you guys are going to love that so stay tuned for that and the next thing we're going to work on after that is going to be the floor I want to get this floor wrapped up and then this room can get taped and painted and then we'll have a kitchen but in the meantime I got a lot of other projects going on outside with machines and some jobs that I'm doing so between all that I'll see you guys on the next video [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Jesse Muller

Views: 52,729

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Id: KnbuE0eeCkI

Length: 86min 18sec (5178 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023