 |
| Finished! |
Winter came... It was cold. We stayed home. Spring arrived (again)... Enough already. We've got to get this done!!! We've had the boxes of stuff sitting for almost a year. Let's do it!! That's what I said. Stephen said, "grumble grumble" when I proposed it on Thursday after hearing that the weather in Raleigh and Myrtle Beach had rain rain and more rain in the forecast. But... good man that he is - He went along with the plan.
Overall Thoughts: Great product. If you're considering replacing countertops but don't have the money or just plain don't want to spend the money to replace them - Try this.
Our lessons learned:
- If you have the ability to do it over a three day weekend. Do it. We did it in two days but three would have taken a lot of pressure off. If you don't have a three day weekend - Start Friday night with the cleaning & sanding part.
- You need two people. No more than two is necessary but two for sure. It'll help things go a little faster.
- The time frames they estimated were off. Well. Either that or we're super slow. We spent WAY more time sanding, prepping the countertops than their estimated 30-45 minutes. I think we were at least double that. Day 1 was about 4 hours. Day 2 was... 6 or so hours. (We had repairs... See bullet towards the bottom.)
- We bought two kits. We'd heard from a friend who used the product, through reviews & in the videos that you need to make sure your base coat is pretty thick. Technically we had enough with one kit to do the whole kitchen - but because it was just the right amount we were worried. We're glad we did. Otherwise we would have stressed over having enough of the base. We found the additional tools to be useful too. Of the 2nd kit the things we didn't use: The additional spreader, the chips and the extra top coat. Everything else we used.
- REALLY REALLY inspect your countertops for laminate that needs to be repaired. Figuring that out the morning you start the work isn't the best time to be fixing stuff. You want to give the rubber cement enough time to dry.
- We started a humidifier the night before to bring up the humidity for day 1. I'm not sure if it helped or not, but... we did it.
- We used an orbital sander to rough up the countertops. It helped take the first layer off but didn't prevent the need to sand using the diamond sanding block. Stephen used the sander (because I can't be trusted with power tools) and I did most of the sanding block work. The directions say to sand in a circular motion with both hands. They're right. It's much easier on the hands/arms and you get a more even sand.
- Tape/plastic after you've sanded and wiped down the countertops. You don't want all of that dust in your tape to accidentally get in the base coat.
- Taping & plasticing is a must. Particularly the taping. And make sure that you extend the tape up at least a couple of inches. This isn't so much because you're going to get paint on the walls but when you spray the rewetting agent if you happen to get it on the walls, and then use the spreader to put the chips on and it hits in the wetting agent that's on the walls... You may have problems getting the chips off the wall. (Personal experience.)
- The base coat is thick. I agree with all reviews, friends, directions - put it on thick! You'll be thankful later when you're tossing on chips and then sanding.
- Repairs to spaces that you accidentally bump into (with your butt - yeah, no joke) aren't hard to fix. Just make sure you lay the base coat on pretty thick and REALLY toss the chips at it. Throw them hard. And if your aim is like mine you'll throw 5 handfulls and only one will actually hit the spot you're trying to get to. *sigh*
- After you're done putting the chips down. Walk away. Leave it alone till tomorrow. Leave the plastic, etc and all of the mess as it is. Seriously. Tomorrow is just going to add to the mess.
- Sanding and chipping on day 2 is the messiest part of the whole project in my opinion. Messier than the chips spreading. Messier than the original sanding. That stuff is going to get up your nose, in your mouth.. If you have a mask and can use it - do so. I can't stand it on my face so I took 2 years off my life by sucking in the dust.
- After we sanded & chipped we took out all of the plastic & cleaned the floors and such. Part of this was because I'd exceeded my time frame for allowing a mess. The other part was that I was worried we'd be moving around the dust when we were putting on the top coat. I'm really glad we removed it. I also removed some of the taped sections that I thought were sketchy (i.e. really painted on and/or chipped) and replaced the tape. This turned out to be a great call. In fact, if I had to do it over again I'd probably retape all of the walls again just to make sure that I didn't hyper glue the tape to the walls with the base coat and then chips & then top coat.
- Plan for repairs. There's going to be a section you didn't coat well enough with chips, that you bumped and didn't realize you bumped or that you just plain missed. You'll need an extra four hours for this purpose alone. If you plan for it and don't need it - great. If you don't plan for it and you do need it you'll be like us finishing at 10:30pm on day two.
Good luck!!! :)
Photos of our before/after.
