How To Remove Granite Countertops Without Breaking the Granite.

[Music] my name is Jeff and I'm refinishing my cabinets and I'm doing that in a different video series but right now what I'm going to talk about is how to remove granite countertops and you might wonder well why don't you just hit it with a hammer well I want to salvage these and be able to reuse them so there's a couple of things that we're gonna have to do to make that happen all right so the first thing you want to do is you want to take your razor knife and you want to break this bead of caulk up here between the backsplash and the wall be careful not to run wild out here and score your drywall I don't I want to avoid ruining that I have to make a couple of passes at it to get it down in there alright once you think you've got it there's a couple of things you can try it you can pound a wooden type shim down there or maybe even a plastic one I'm gonna try a plastic one that I broke off a section of before and I'm just gonna try to wedge it down in here to start prying this off slowly because I've already done this on another countertop and they used a construction adhesive to stick it to the wall so we're going to definitely damage the drywall behind there but hopefully not too bad you can cut this bead going down so that was a mistake on my part so remember that when you try to do yours that's all repairable though now what I want to do is I want to take another wedge and I want to shove it back in here let me grab another one of these let me get another one that's broke away huh very good see the construction adhesive they put on there now we did cause a little bit of damage to the drywall but that's okay that's all gonna be covered up in the future and that's totally repairable with some drywall much very good we'll be right back hi welcome back in earlier part of the video I hold you that I wanted to salvage these countertops but I want to explain how we're gonna do that and how this particular countertop is put together typically what they put on the cabinets is what's known as a sub top that sub top is a sheet of plywood that is screwed down to the cabinet base on top of that they put some blobs of glue in my case and then they put the granite on to the sub top now I want to remove this I want to salvage it I don't want to destroy it typically what you would do to remove that would be to break this up with a hammer remove the pieces find the screws in the sub top and back those screws out in order to replace the sub top and then start start the process all over of putting in a new countertop so since I want to salvage it and I don't want to break it up I've got to find those screws that's really really tricky there's a couple of things you can do to try to find those screws you can use a magnetic device to help you locate the screw needs to be pretty powerful because it's it's really hard to identify a screw going through wood with this little device the other method is you can take this scraper and you can bring it from the inside of the cabinet between the sub top and the face frame and slide it along if there's enough room until you impact a screw once you think you've found a screw mark it with a good marker and then you're going to use a multi-tool and you're gonna plunge cut from the inside of the cabinet between the sub top and the face frame to cut that screw now I'm gonna recommend that you use a carbide blade I've tried this before with just metal cutting blades and they wear out far too quickly so let's let's start by finding the screw so I'll be down here and you can take this magnet and run and and watch this little indicator kind of straighten out when we found a screw see there right there as it wobbles so we've got a screw right in this area and see it's not a very good indication it's very subtle so now that we found a screw take the marker and we want to mark the underside here where you're not going to see it after we finish the cabinets all right we're gonna take the multi-tool here [Music] now you can hear it when it impacted the screw it made a lot of noise and you see the smoke coming out don't panic it's also gonna do a little bit of damage up here to the very top of the face frame no big deal you're not going to see that you can lightly send that and then once it's finished it'll just disappear alright I figured now would be a time to give you a tip to help you find the screws this is a really tedious process so once you release or cut through the screws in like a corner section take em and Ram that shim in between the sub top and the face frame as I've done here what that does is it lifts everything up in this corner it also relieves the pressure on this between the sub top and the cabinet frame enough that you can take your scraper and put that through this gap right here and then you hear that I hit a screw right there so at this point what I want to do is I want to mark it if I need to or just take the multi-tool and cut that screw so let's go ahead and do that [Music] all right I made it through the screw now what I want to do is I want to push the shim a little bit countertop along the link here and put that back in that gap and run this along so we hit another screw that looks like we may have hit one right there so I'll continue this process until I get all the screws released and then we'll get this countertop out of here without breaking it alright it took a while but I got probably seven or eight screws cut along the perimeter of the base holding the sub top to the base cabinet and now it's time to remove it I've got some wedges down here to make it a little bit easier to lift it up and slide it off now you'll want to get someone to help you with this process because these slabs weighs several hundred pounds and I've got a helper on the far end you may wonder why would we want to salvage these you could use these for anything from a backyard project to selling these to somebody that wants a countertop for whatever reason it's a much better way to go than just break them up thank you that concludes this series of how to remove a granite countertop without destroying it certainly if you have any questions feel free to send me a message and I'll do my best to answer your question below you'll find some links of some of the products I use to do this job thank you very much for watching [Music]

Channel: How To With Mr. Noodle

Views: 591,552

Keywords: How To, Granite Countertops, Removal, Construction, Tools, HowToNoodle, Home Improvement, Kitchen, Remodel, Stanley Magnetic Stud Finder, Dremel MM30-04 Multi-Max, Dremel MM485B Carbide Flush Cutting Blades, Hyder Tool 06221 2-Inch Stiff Scraper

Id: 4opYeuRUqjk

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2018