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Step 2Make A Template
Templates are a necessity, especially in an old house like mine where settling has caused the walls to be out of square. It also takes alot of guesswork out of the process and believe me - the last thing you want is to spend lots of money and time on your countertops to find that they won't fit because you were off by 1/8".
Cheng uses doorskin for his templates, but I had plenty of cardboard boxes left over from my IKEA cabinets, so I recycled them into templates. I made sure to use the factory cut edges of the cardboard around the perimeters of the and inside the sink cutout to make sure it was all perfect. A glue gun works great for putting the template together. While forming the templates, I allowed for a 1 1/2" overhang from the cabinet face and a 1/8" overhang around the sink cutout.
You'll notice that I reinforced my cabinets with 3/4" plywood and also did a plywood top to add support to the concrete. This is a necessity for anything as heavy has concrete and I wouldn't recommend skipping that step. Depending on the construction of your house this may not be necessary, but I also supported my floor underneath the island with steel supports in the basement to compensate for the added weight.
Make sure to label your templates so you'll know which sides are what. This can be a huge time saver since edges of the countertop that aren't exposed, don't need to be ground and polished.
As you can see, Mr. P is very proud of his work.
Cheng uses doorskin for his templates, but I had plenty of cardboard boxes left over from my IKEA cabinets, so I recycled them into templates. I made sure to use the factory cut edges of the cardboard around the perimeters of the and inside the sink cutout to make sure it was all perfect. A glue gun works great for putting the template together. While forming the templates, I allowed for a 1 1/2" overhang from the cabinet face and a 1/8" overhang around the sink cutout.
You'll notice that I reinforced my cabinets with 3/4" plywood and also did a plywood top to add support to the concrete. This is a necessity for anything as heavy has concrete and I wouldn't recommend skipping that step. Depending on the construction of your house this may not be necessary, but I also supported my floor underneath the island with steel supports in the basement to compensate for the added weight.
Make sure to label your templates so you'll know which sides are what. This can be a huge time saver since edges of the countertop that aren't exposed, don't need to be ground and polished.
As you can see, Mr. P is very proud of his work.
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Dec 18, 2008. 5:06 PMmkushin
says:
Question... With the plywood sub-top... How do you hide that? I'm wondering... If you're basically just making a "block" out of concrete that sits on top of the sub-top, wouldn't you be able to see it? Or do you just recess the top far enough back that it's not seen? Any elaboration on the sub-top situation would be fantastic. Thank you!
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Jan 22, 2009. 10:17 AMconcretepaul
says:
mkushin, Most all modern cabinets can support concrete countertops without a sub-top to distribute the weight. I always install directly on the cabinet bases. If you want to put a sub-top on then trim the raw edge with a strip of wood molding stained to match the cabinets. With the overhang of the top any slight miss match in color won't be noticed.
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