More Leveling

The most time consuming aspect of making our countertops is making sure they are flat and level.  This wasn't a problem I had with the samples I made because the samples were so small that imperfections in flatness or level were not detectible.  Imperfections in flatness and level do show up on the larger surface areas, so this is something I've had to figure out.

At first, I tried to eye-ball the level, that didn't work out.  The human eye can only see so much at once.  The brain fills in details that just aren't there and something that looks level isn't.  

The next method I tried was to use my T-square to find all the valleys, mark them then grind down to them.  The problem with this method is that not all valleys are the same height, nor are they all level.

At present, I'm finding the highest spot, marking it, and grinding it down.  This seems to be the most accurate method.  It's also very time consuming.  I'm using my longest level, marking the high spots on the X-axis, and marking the high spots on the Y-axis.  The high spots are simply the parts of the countertop that touch the bottom of the level.  I'm shining a bright light across the counter top on the side opposite to where I am so that as I look under the level I'll see the light anywhere light passes under it.  I'm also using my putty knifes to lift the low end of the level to make the level . . . well . . . level.  I'm marking all the places the light does not pass under the level using the level like a ruler.

Notice the hash-marks I've drawn on the countertop in the photo above.  the places where the hash-marks intersect are the only places I grind down.  Eventually, when the counter is flat and level, no matter where I put the level, the entire level will touch the surface of the counter top and no light will pass under it.

At the moment, there is a 2 mm difference between the highest and lowest points on the kitchen island counter top which are just over 2-feet away from each other.  Grinding down these peaks requires a very light touch.  I've already turned a couple peaks into new valleys so I've put the 15-Amp Makita high-speed grinder away and switched to my variable speed polisher with the large 7-inch grinding wheel on a low speed.  

Polishing New Countertops

I think I'm on the final stretch polishing our counter tops.  This is the most time consuming part of the whole fabrication process.  

The polishing process started with grinding the surface of the concrete down to expose the aggregate and to remove any blotches.  Grinding the surface also exposes small air bubbles and pin holes so they need to be filled with a slury mixture.  Repeat the slurry and grinding process until counters are smooth, level, and flat.

When the counter tops were reasonably flat I began polishing them with 50 grit diamond polishing pads and worked my way up to 6000 grit pads.  

Here is one of the counter tops polished up to 3000 grit.

The photo above shows the exposed aggregate (rocks), glass, and quartz sand that I used in the concrete mix.

Just to show the difference between un-polished vs polished.  Here is the area the kitchen faucet and skink will be installed.  It's only polished to 400 grit.  The picture just after shows the same area polished up to 3000 grit.

It's slow work but we're getting there

Poured Remaining Countertops and Started Grinding Island

April and I spent last week working on our new concrete counter tops.  On Monday and Tuesday we worked on the kitchen island countertops.  On Wednesday I had to resupply some of my colloring and do some yard work.  Thursday was spent removing the remaining old countertops.  On Friday we installed the Hardee board and built the forms for the remaining kitchen countertops.  I  had hoped to pour the concrete for the remaining countertops on Saturday, but it was all I could do to get the foam inserts and cut-outs made for the countertop stove and the kitchen sink.  I also cut and placed the rebar and wire wire mesh.  Whew.

As I mentioned on the 4th, we removed the old countertops on Thursday.  It was quite challenging because there was hardware holding the old countertops together that I hadn't expected to have to deal with.  Part of the challenge was finding the right tools in addition to finding the hidden things holding the counter tops to where they are/were.

I started trying to remove the old countertops by trying to remove the screws underneath; however, I quickly found there was more than just the screws holding everything together.  

The backsplashes were attached to the countertops via screws, and the backsplashes were also glued  to the walls as shown in the photo above.  I tried to use a putty knife to separate the backsplash from the walls; however, I still ended up pulling some of the dry-wall away.  I'll have to repair this later.

After all the old counters were removed, I installed the Hardee board which is a board made from Portland cement and common sand.  I chose the hardee board because it's super stiff and virtually the same stuff I'm pouring.  A good combination.  

In the photo below I'm leaning against the Hardee board.  Next I'll setup the forms.

I attached the forms directly to the Hardee board with a 1/2 inch gap between the front edge of the Hardee board and the form.  The gap will allow the concrete to flow in front of the hardee board.  By adding this gap you see an countertop that's 1 1/2 inches thick.  It is all concrete, but only an inch of the expensive stuff was actually poured.

Here is my rough sketch showing how I attached the forms to the Hardee board

It took a couple days to setup the forms because I also sealed every gap.  The diagram does not show the foam cut-outs, the rebar, or the wire mesh that I had to install due to making the countertop one giant piece.

The photo below shows the wire mesh, rebar, and foam cut-out for the sink installed and ready for the final pour.

On Monday night, my wife April and I worked together to mix and pour the concrete.  While each new batch was mixing I was using a palm sander (with no sandpaper) to vibrate the air bubbles out of the concrete.

It took a few hours to pour the counter top slabs, and a couple hours to clean up the equipment.  As a rule, never leave cement on the equipment because if you do, it will become a permanent part of the equipment.

It was a long night of hard work but as the photo above shows, we finished pouring the remaining countertops.

Next, we removed the tools from the center island to begin grinding it down.  The photo below shows the rough and un-ground countertop.

Here is a different angle that shows off how uneven the top of the slab is, due to the river of rocks.  Notice though that you can't see the rocks yet, at least not like we will see them after I start grinding off the top 1/8-inch.

You can see some of the rocks in the corner.  There are a lot of pin-holes and voids but they will be covered when I add a slury coat.

After a couple of hours of grinding down the island counter top, we can finally see what the river will look like.  Here is a picture of my wife April inspecting the rough ground river effect.  April is the one who designed and placed all the stones for the river effect.  I really like it and we can't wait to show it off the way we intended it to be seen.

Removed Remaining Old Countertops

Yesterday and today I worked on removing the remaining old countertops from the kitchen.  I keep underestimating the amount of work it takes to do demolition work because I tend to assume it takes little skill to tear something apart.  My assumption would be correct if all I needed to do is indiscriminantly swing a sledge hammer; however, if I want to keep cabinets, walls, lighting, and other fixtures undamaged then I need to exercise extreme discression when removing the old stuff.

I'm sure there is a life lesson in this.  Giving and receiving criticism comes to mind. 

In order to remove the countertops surrounding the kitchen I needed to spend a little time studying how the counters were attached to the cabinets.  To do that I needed to remove drawers and empty the top shelf of the cabinets under the counters.  

When April and I started pulling things out of the kitchen again I thought to myself, 'Oh No! We just moved back into the kitchen.  Not this again.'  The pain of being displaced from our kitchen is still a fresh memory.  The good news is that this work is not going to take two and a half months. Actually, most of thie work will be finished by Saturday.  Not bad considering I started this on Monday.

Yesterday I was so proud of myself for finding and removing the hidden bolts holding the separate sections of the counter tops together.  I had expected to finish removing the old remaining countertops in about an hour.  The problem is that I didn't expect them to be glued so well to each other and to the walls.  The following picture shows the damage I inflicted when I removed the backsplashes that were glued to the walls.

I'll patch up the dry wall but not worry too much about making it look pretty because we are going to add a tile border that will cover this up good.

Once I got the first section out, removing the other sections of countertop was a little easier.  Out of the four days I've spent working on the counter tops, I've spent a day and a half removing the old countertops and two days (so far) making the new ones.

Here is a picture April took of me just after I had finished measuring, cuting, and fiting the last piece of Hardee board, a cement board that will support the cement and will become part of the counter top.

Tomorrow I will do the stove and sink cut-outs, pre-install mounting hardware for our new stainless steel single-bowl undermount sink, attach the cement forms, tape and mud all seams, and caulk everything.  Caulking everyting is important.  I didn't caulk anything before I poured the center island and we ended up leaking cement everywhere.  It was bad.  So bad that this time I've put painters plastic under the Hardee board that's attached to the wall, covers the cabinet top (under the Hardee board) and covers the front of the cabinets.

Poured Island Counter Top

Today I finally poured the concrete for our new counter top over the kitchen island.  Here is a photo of the island with the old formica countertop:

Here is what the island looks like without any countertop

It didn't really matter that there were no supports under the bar area; however; I really don't want to have any cracks in our new countertop so I'll need to add supports.  I'm also going to add a 6-inch bar to the left end.

After removing the old countertop and inspecting the cabinet I found that there wasn't much I had to reinforce.  I used a really inexpensive hard-wood to add some structural strength to the cabinets where I added supports to the bar areas as shown in this photo

Once the reinforcements and the supports were added I installed the 1/2-inch Hardee board.  The Hardee board is the backer to the concrete countertop.  It's made of Portland cement and sand.  

I had to tape and mud only one seam in the island countertop.  The Tape is a glass fiber tape specifically for cement work.  It's similar to the mesh dry-wall tape.  The biggest difference between the concrete mesh tape and drywall tape is the thickness of the tape and the color.

Once the backer board was in place I was able to attach the cement forms I made from strips of melamine.  Here is the countertop with the forms attached to the backer board.

I will admit I made two mistakes.  First I neglected to caulk/seal the underside of the Hardee board and the melamine form.  I also forgot to put tape over the screw holes in the top of the form so we had to be very careful when we poured the cement to prevent it from getting onto the heads of the screws.

While the freshly taped and mudded seams were curing I setup the mixer in the kitchen.  in order to get the mixer high enough to pour directly into the forms I had to use a bunch of the sample slabs I've poured in the past to make a platform to put the mixer on.  In hind-sight, this was not necessary.  We were actually quite lucky that the mixer didn't buck or jump much while mixing or the mixer could have fallen over dumping a load of cement on the floor.

As it was, I didn't seal the forms so there was a lot of leakage we had to clean up.  Instead of pouring one countertop and starting the disassembly of the others, we just poured the one countertop and cleaned up the mess afterwards.  

The picture above shows the freshly poured countertop.  I hadn't yet troweled the cement; however, April has created her river effect in the middle of the countertop.  You can kind of see it but it's covered in a cement slury.  

After the slab has curred for at least three days i'll remove the forms and grind off the excess slurry to expose the aggregate.  We can't wait to see what it will look like.