Cultured marble/granite? Not cheap, but less than anything else we could find. Of course, there's a place that makes them a block away, so that helped since I could just go pick them up.
Cultured marble/granite? Not cheap, but less than anything else we could find. Of course, there's a place that makes them a block away, so that helped since I could just go pick them up.
nocones wrote: You can do tile for cheap. Do narrow grout lines with epoxy grout and your good. Use a cutting board and keep them clean. Tile can be as low as $2.00/sqft. Stainless is probably cheap as well and you can fabricate it yourself.
You can get 1x1 foot granite tiles for ~1$ a piece. I did all the counter-tops in my kitchen in them. Grount and float was the most expensive parts. ~7K for the same thing in a solid piece of granite, which would look stupid in a 40's style ranch anyway.
I have done a few concrete counter tops. They would be cheap to do yourself, but the finish isn't super durable. It stains pretty easily and you have to be careful not to chip or gouge it. I think an epoxy finish is mandatory. On one job for a "man cave" I put an automatic valve body into the counter and it turned out great.
One of my favorite counters that I sold to several customers was a multi stone counter. Whenever I was at the stone yard I bought odd cheap pieces of stone of the same thickness. I then cut them to fit together following the basic outline of the piece. So for a 30 lf counter I had 3-4 pieces of stone all different colors.
I'm assuming you laid epoxy over top when you were done to smooth it out? Interesting idea.
In reply to Keith Tanner:
Scratch coat base then a layer of medium set or thick set depending on application. Beating in the stone gets it flat.
Now that I think about it, your epoxy idea is great for people that aren't in the trade. Scratch coats of mortar and medium or thick set mortars are easy to do mediocre but hard to get perfect.
I can see that keeping children occupied for hours.
Trans_Maro wrote: My house as a tile countertop. It sucks. It's coming out when the reno happens and a decent quality laminate goes in.
Tile is what we took out when we put in quartz. It REALLY sucks. It's ugly, it's hard to keep clean, especially the grout, and it's not even, so if you put a glass in the wrong spot, it will fall over and break. The single good point is that you can put hot stuff on it. BFD. Given a choice between tile and laminate for the same money, I'd take laminate 12 times out of 10.
Check out Glass fiber reinforced concrete. GFRC for search results.
I have done a few tops over the years with bagged concrete and rebar/mesh. The last one I only used rebar on the perimeter and a glass fiber add in. For our next project we will use the GFRC techniques. (Fibers but also some of the new add mixes for strength and curing behind a sprayed face coat)
T
Datsun1500 wrote:
I saw this done for flooring once. Never thought about it as a counter top. Kinda cool.
You'll need to log in to post.
