How To Cut a Laminate Countertop | Including Lessons Learned

hey what's up you guys it's Scott with the everyday home repairs and today for the first time I'm going to be cutting a laminate countertop this is a six foot or 72 inch laminate countertop that I need to trim down to 58 and a half inches to fit into our laundry room for some updates we're doing overall should be pretty straightforward I have a plan of attack but like many of you you might be tackling this for the first time so I want to take you along show you how I'm going to approach this show you the end results and then any lessons learned so let's jump in and I'll show you what tools you're going to need running through the tools we'll start off we're just getting everything marked so you can start to approach the cut I have two different squares here so you have a speed square and kind of standard square obviously you're going to need a pencil tape measure and then some blue painters tape I think is the best for this I would get a little bit thicker blue painters tape so it gives you a little bit more leeway in lining up for your cut next up you're going to go into getting your guide in place so I got two C clamps and then these are one mini clamps and that's gonna hold these two pieces or scraps of 2x4 ones cut to 25 inches and what is cut of three inches and I'll show you how to place those and then that is going to guide your skill saw or circular saw so make sure again if you don't do many projects you might just have a general saw blade in so you might have like a framing saw blade with 24 teeth like this that's not what you're looking for this is not gonna cut the finish you want you want a extra-fine saw blade like this with 60 teeth that is gonna take smaller chunks and then give you a better chance of a nice finish when you're done so that's really all you're looking at and let's jump in and start marking off or cut starting I'm away mitten size of the countertop will mark the measurement that you're looking to cut you don't have to be exact here but I marked three different locations because actually we're just putting down interstate and what this will do is it will protect the surface during the cut and reduce the chances of chipping the laminate surface now flipping the countertop over again we'll measure out here we're doing 58 and a half inches we'll mark two locations and use my larger square to get a straight line for the longest part of the cut once again I get that line drawn then I'll use my small speed square and I'll finish off all the other like the front lip and then also the backsplash just making sure I have that cut line throughout the backside of the countertop now with your saw adjusted to the maximum height in your guide in place what we want to do is set the blade to exactly where we wanted to cut then you're gonna use our C clamps and you'll attach your C camp clamps to both sides so the one closest to us is set now I'm going to set the C clamp and tighten it on the far side from you to make sure everything is locked down and ready for the cut then just doing a dry run to make sure everything is looking good and also to practice the transition from the main countertop surface and then rotating around to cut the backsplash this is probably one of the trickier or the most tricky part of this cut so you might have seen the kind of tape and hodge podge setup on the right hand side I have two sawhorses that will support the countertop for the 58 and half inches and then this remainder if you had somebody else around they could hold that up for you but I don't want it snapping off when I get close to the end so I just put an additional saw force put some one by and then shimmed it and then tape those shims down because I'm gonna have a bunch of vibration and then just put some tape to hold that countertop piece once it's all cut off so it should give enough hold for at least a few seconds I need to hold while I'm finishing off the cut so now we're ready to give it our first run taking your time you want to cut through that front lip and then problem is I have an interference on that C clamp so I move the C clamp out as far as I could on the 2x4 and gave it a second attempt still taking my time being careful from the transition on the front lip to the main counter top surface but again we have a shoe and that is interference with the 2x4 now so what's happening is there's just not enough clearance so if it's act if the blade side fold depth there's only about a half-inch and then the motor housing goes out about three and a half inches if I went to an inch and a half which would get this cut done then we're looking at about an inch and that is something I can work with so now on the third attempt we have swapped out the guides to one by six boards and again we'll give it a try to make the cut everything is looking a lot better this time so you'll switch over once you get far enough and complete the cut down the backsplash again taking your time through this transition where you have to rotate and then you're going to start following the small 3-inch guy that you installed all right so third time was a charm let's see importantly how does the finish edge look so this edge is gonna go against the wall so it will have a bead of caulk but man that is really really nice when we took three tries and we got it then but the most important thing is I'm really pleased with the overall finish and what did we learn what did I learn and you saw some of those mistakes there is when you're adjusting your guy when you're setting your clamps you good doing everything in place obviously you have your depth and a whole different level on your skill song so the actual motor housing can absolutely interfere as you saw on try one and take two so the one by that I ended up picking up so instead of the two by fours I got one by six one that's gonna offset so you can set your clamp actually further out than the motor housing and it's gonna be one inch opposed to having to clear two inches once you get on the main surface and you're cutting the longer cut on your counter top so one by I'd use one by instead of the two by fours what my six is what I what I prefer and I'm actually keeping the two pieces that I created these they would be super handy in the future if I do this again and then lesson number two that I learned is when you're transporting lamb gonna be extremely careful the laminate cannot take any load coming from the non finish side especially if you have the lamb in here and you're pushing up it will build flake off so you'll be coming back from the home-improvement store and then you already have tips which I actually do we have tips right here and now I think the damages such that the that we'll have against the wall little covering it but it's very easy to damage the countertop when it's not installed when you're going from the underside and pressing it against the laminate it will show so that's what I learned hopefully you guys got a few things from this don't forget to subscribe to the channel and if this one helped you out give us a a light we have videos coming out on a weekly basis so we'll see you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 704,882

Keywords: cutting laminate countertop, how to cut laminate, how to cut laminate countertops

Id: sV2xa4TVBus

Length: 9min 5sec (545 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2020