Counter(top) Punching

We have learned more about countertops in the six months between February and September than we had ever bargained for. It never seemed to us that buying a flat slab of something to spill coffee on would be that complicated. Some of the biggest idiots we know have countertops. How tough could this be?

We made it tougher on ourselves by getting a great deal on an apron-front, undermount sink. We got that sink, which Tara had her eye on before we even signed the papers on the house, from Overstock.com for about 1/5 the retail price. It was like, "I don't care about electrical service or water in the basement. I want a FARM SINK!" So a farm sink it was. And after we did the cabinets, here's what we were looking at for our own little hunk of kitchen work surface glory:



But as we were designing the new kitchen, our first round of research brought us to the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop on the Conventional Wisdom of Kitchen Remodeling Highway: Thou shalt not create a laminate countertop for thy undermount sink, lest ye swell up and part from thy substrate; it is an abomination."

I'm like...come on. They've put a man on the moon. Solved Fermat's Last Theorem. The Red Sox won the World Series. You mean I have to drop $1200 on seventeen square feet of solid-surface countertop because modern science can't create a waterproof seam between a 1/16" sheet of laminate and a piece of friggin wood?

But nobody would do it for us. It was like asking them to make it out of kitten fur and baby seal eyes. I could swear I heard one guy laughing at us. AFTER he'd hung up the phone.

So--our alternatives:

• Stop pissing and moaning and pay the money for Corian, granite, marble, poured concrete or glass.
  
• Pay even MORE money for a "green" solution like Richlite, Avonite, or shredded $20 bills. Which we'd have to provide, from the estimates of it.
  
• Stainless steel over particleboard. An interesting idea. But around here, it was hard to find a supplier to come in cheap, especially with the bends and corners in our countertop.
  
• I know you're losing interest rapidly, but bear with me.
  
• Tile. An option, as we could have cement backerboard on the bottom. Waterproof, but we couldn't figure out how to do the rim around the sink. Plus, nobody likes an uneven surface.
  
• Kitten fur and baby seal eyes. Believe me, I thought about it.
  
• Do my OWN laminate countertop. We went a long way down the road with this plan. We were gonna screw together two sheets of 5/8" exterior plywood, waterproof them, cut the template out with my widdle jigsaw, laminate all the surfaces and mount the thing. Problem 1: I have no idea how to do any of that. Problem 2: I think when I ran that by a few people they laughed even harder than the first guy I talked to. Back to square 1.
  

So one day I read about some stuff called Trespa Athlon, made by a Dutch company, made of some weird resin. Hmmm...good idea. Resin, you say?

Well, we couldn't actually get a hold of anyone at Trespa, but Tara got on her horse, ran with the ball, and found Lab Furniture, in Middleton, Massachusetts, a town near and dear to my heart after my friends Paul and Dave were caught drinking underage there back in 1986. They were expelled from Middleton permanently. Told NEVER to return. Ever. I don't know about Dave, but Paul sneaked back in with me around 2000, and I swear the cops raised an eyebrow at him when we drove past the Dunkin' Donuts.

Back to the story: we called Mike at Lab Furniture, sent him our template, and he came back with Prime Epoxy Resin. This is the stuff they used to make your high school chemistry lab work surface. Impervious to water, chemicals, frog guts, or my homemade macaroni and cheese. Black, 1" thick, can be cut and machined, and came in handy 4'x8' sheets. Squint, and you can see our design was exactly 96" wide. Our only spot of luck in the whole process.

The best part? We paid about $500 for the piece, plus a 4" backsplash all around, and another $150 to ship it from the factory in Michigan. Took about three weeks, we got it in, and it slid right on like a big black epoxy resin slipper. Thanks, Mike!

Anyway, if you're still reading this, know that if you're in the market for a solid surface countertop, you don't have to pay upwards of $70 a square foot. As long as you want it black. With a 1/8" beveled edge. But hey, why don't more people know about this stuff? And why the hell do people charge so much for countertops?

Next up: the plumbing. Lookin' forward to THAT.