I took on a larger project recently. I am converting a Corian countertop/sink + island + desk in a kitchen area over to a hardwood live-edge counter top.
Laminate - A bunch of boards/planks glued side by side in this case
Butcherblock - Typically end-grain up and down on smaller pieces of wood all glued together. In this build, the planks are full thickness of the countertop, and run long grain down the length of the counter top
Live-Edge - The final plank of the board is not cut to a factory finish, but instead is a smooth sinuous/wavey edge that slightly varies by 1/4 inch for the length of the board. Due to the live edge, the boards are not completely parallel to the factory cut edge.
1.5" Thick x 25" Deep
x 4 ft
x 6 ft
x 8 ft
x 10 ft
Note the 25" depth ends with some 1/4" variation in the live edge, and the live edge tapers about a half inch.
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^^^^ Taper
The taper can point up or down.
This product offered by Home Depot in 2025, is a Saman (aka Rain Tree Wood, or Monkey Wood) hardwood from South America.
The planks in the laminate go through the full thickness of the countertop, but the planks vary in width a good bit and are not perfectly parallel to the factory edge.
Also the factory edge has a round-off across the last 3/4"... like a minor taper of 1/32". The whole thing is prefinished with a UV-paint. Best I can guess, it's a semi-gloss, clear coat. It's pretty hard, but not harder than most metals or ceramics. After some light sanding, late in the project, there is some amber additive in the clear coat, or they stained some of it before the clearcoat.
|##########dish###### miter
|####sink##washer####
|####################
#####
##oven## #####
######## |
######## fridge
######## |
######## pantry
#island# |
######## #####
######## #desk
######## #####
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E
N + S
W
On the east side of the kitchen is the sink, and dishwasher.
The south-east corner has about 5 feet that goes to the fridge. This will miter with the long stretch on the east side.
After the fridge and a mini pantry/spice cabinet, is a desk area that is just under 4 feet wide.
There are no counter stretches on the north or west sides of the room.
In the middle of the room is the island, with a stove top/oven (30" wide) facing the sink. It has a 1 foot counter to either side, and has a 63" island attached to both of the 1 foot counters making a u-shape around the oven. The total width of the island is 56 1/2" and the total length is 90".
The structural support under the island is 1 1/4" square steel tubing, with plastic end caps. This rests on top of some standard cabinetry, with some electrical outlets added.
To cover the island with the hardwood laminate countertops, 3 pieces are needed:
2 8ft pieces, and 1 6ft piece. The live edge will be removed from the 6ft piece and the round-off will be removed from all factory edges that run the length of the boards.
This is the easiest cut. It is slightly more shallow than the rest of the counter tops so the depth needs to be cut to 23 inches (removing two inches from the factory edge). Then the width needs to be cut to match the old one and get dropped in.
The island currently has the oven and a large plywood covering and two small plywood coverings on it. 1 ft counter tops by the oven need to be lowered 1/4" before proceeding with the replacement.
The end sizes for the 3 pieces ended up being:
2x 20.75 x 90 from the 8ft boards
1x 15 x 63 from a 6ft board
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Then an additional square needed to be cut out of the 8 ft boards to make room for the oven. 7.25 x 27 and a 3/8" hole for the corner it would hit.
The miter should line up the live edges in a nice way. So the two pieces being used for the miter should be stacked, and then determine the intersection point of the live edge.
Also the previous counter top had a 6" drop for the south section (to avoid joining two pieces of counter).
This is getting a drawer and filled to bring the counter up to level.
The total length here is 162. The 10 ft board is only 122 inches. So another 40 inches will need to get added on.
The sink will be a double wide single bowl stainless steel (rounded corners) under mount sink. This sits about 6ft from the north wall.
The dishwasher is adjacent to it. Then a few feet later the miter starts to join with the south-east corner of counter top.
I started with a 7 1/4" Diablo 60 tooth blade from Harbor Freight on a low end Drill Master Circular Saw (with a lot of wear and tear on it).
Almost nothing on this saw was "true" (likely from lots of use/abuse by the owner). The sled was misaligned with the blade (front edge distance v the rear edge distance); the blade was very difficult to get square to the sled. Also the sled is some bent steel with some questionable mounting to the rest of the saw.
A new blade did not fix the lack of "true" in the blade. It did cut, but the serations were visible vertically. The initial entry while the guard was lifting up with cause the blade to wobble +- 1/16" of an inch. And it was a 88 degree cut angle instead of a straight 90 degree cut. And it would leave some hairs in the top edge of the board (tearout).
A nice long fence (rail or track) made cuts repeatable. This was a $40 clampable fence from Harbor Freight with dimensions 101 inch x 3 inch x .75 inch. At full length it can bow a bit (1/16") in the middle, but taping down another block against the lateral movement in the middle fixes it.
Getting the highest end plugin circular saw at Harbor Freight was $90 with their high end 40 tooth hardwood blade made a big difference.
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Magnetic blade stop
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2x on speed
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Almost twice the weight
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Aluminum sled (seems higher precision and better mounted)
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Vacuum attachment
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Blade was labeled as high speed 40 teeth ($15)
For Rip cuts (going the length of the board) in 1.5 inch hardwood, a blade with fewer teeth performs better because the chips can be longer.
When getting ready to do the miter, I wanted a very straight, repeatable angled cut. But the room isn't exactly square, so I couldn't depend on that. I ended up lining up one board in place, and then brought in the other board in place on top of it. I marked where it would intersect. This is tricky with the live edge. I then, used this large protractor to do the cut. I dry fitted afterwards and it was off by 1/16th or so on one edge.
I drew a new line and use the protractor and cut it. It fit really well... now everything was +/- 1/32... mostly flush.
How do you cut out a sink hole in 1.5" hardwood?
How do you position it?
How do you mount it?
How do you water proof it?
Welp. It was tricky.
I put a bunch of cardboard down on top of the island (from the boxes that the wood came in). and put the upside down sink on top of the upside down long east board.
(This already had the miter cut out of it... so I knew it was the board for the spot).
I planned for the spigot that would go against the wall, and how that would fit against the window edge a few inches above the counter top.
After positioning and negotiating it, I would have almost no spare room for anything.
The cabinetry was going to touch the metal flange of the under mounted sink in most configurations, or I was going to hit the window ledge or there wouldn't be room for the mounts.
For mounts there are these slot clamps that are like a shallow u shape with slot in the middle.
\________/
When you put a bolt in the middle, it acts like a strong spring to put a lot of clamping pressure on both ends of the u.
It works for granite under mounted sinks. It works for hardwood undermounted sinks.
I bought 2 sets, so I had 10 clamps to install.
-----------wall/window ledge-------------
O faucet
____\____\____________/____/___
\| \ \ / / |/
\ sink /
\| |/
\ /
|____/______/________\______\____|
/ / \ \
-----------cabinet edge-------------------
Look at that lovely ascii art! Also note, the sink has a rounded edge in the 4 corners... It is not a straight shot anywhere. It's like a cross between a rounded rectangle and an oval. The long slashes are the clamps that grip onto the flange of the sink and bolt into the the wood.
The O is the faucet hole.
After I had it figured out, I drew a line and did a super rough cut with a hole saw/spade bit followed by a scroll saw, with a healthy 2 inch margin from where I thought I needed to go. Then while I had the sink in place, and bolted down, I drew a sharpie line of where the final cut would go.
I cut to within 1/4" of the final line.
Then I ordered a 2" router bit with a bearing on it... I think mine had 2... I only need one on the far edge of the bit. With the sink mounted and flipped right side up, I ran the router around the inside of the sink with a huge router running the bit. I put masking tape on the inside of the sink where the bearing would press into... This helped to protect the surface of the stainless steel from getting marred by the bearing.
Also big routers are heavy and the hose fittings to vacuum up chips while running is heavy. Have someone help you and help hold the vacuum hose.
After a few passes, it came out beautifully. The tip to use a router with a bearing on it made all the difference.
The end grain is a little spikey. Sanding can help... The coating for the epoxy is important, too.
Finally round the top of the hole with a 1/8" router bit.
BONUS! Fix the spikey finish that comes out during the epoxy phase... Get the end grain wet with water and then sand it again. When it's wet, the grain will get spikey, just like it would with epoxy. If you sand it now, you might be able to get by without a sanding step during the epoxy phase.
Sinks get wet and are used around water. Welp, how do you keep the water out of your wood?
You use 2 part epoxy! Like bar top epoxy! Home depot sells this stuff, especially for bar tops.
The odor wasn't bad, but the cure time and how to manage the cups of sticky glue is a little odd.
Always use 3 disposable cups for each batch, always have a disposable stirring stick.
Measure out exact amounts of hardener and resin (part A and part B) into their separate cups.
Pour one into the other and stir for the time dictated on the packaging. Then pour that into a third cup and stir again. It should be getting warm and having suspended bubbles.
With the sink removed from the router cut hole, preheat the wood with a heat gun. Yes. Get the wood very warm.
Also use painters tape for the topside of the prefinished countertop. We don't need to seal the top... It already has the UV paint clearcoat on it. But don't cover up any of the raw grain that got hit by the router. All of that needs to get epoxied well. Probably do this before the preheat step on the wood. I did my first few coats of epoxy right side up, and then my final coat upside down.
Paint the epoxy on with a brush. If you have a glue up brush (looks like a bunch of rubbery spaghetti, that works well with epoxy) or use your painting stick, doesn't matter. Put a good coat on there. Wait! There's bubbles suspended in it! What do I do?
Go a few inches onto the underside of the sink.
Use the heat gun. Wave it back and forth, and the heat will bring the bubbles to the surface.
Wait! It's spikey again! I thought we sanded it. Welp. This is an issue with end-grain and epoxy. Your choices are: sand it after it cures and then do another thin coat, or... actually that's your only option.
When you do the final coat(s) upside down, be sure to water proof a few inches from your cut covering all the area that will get touched by the sink flange. Cover up your holes you drilled for the mounting clips so you don't fill them with epoxy.
If you have a good mix of epoxy, and it has a 12 to 72 hr cure, you should be able to start another coat after a few hours. If the temperature of the room is very chilly, it may take longer to cure.
After a few coats of the stuff, seeing it get into the finger print phase was when I was ready to add another coat. Given 3 days, it should harden up completely.
Also if you leave leftover epoxy in a larger thicker mass, it hardens much more quickly because the chemical reaction is more efficient or works faster or something.
Why would you put aluminum above your dishwasher?
Dishwashers get hot, and sometimes steamy.
If the heat and steam hit your nice wood counter tops a lot, guess what... you now have a big temperature differential and you cycle that thing a few times a week or a day and you might get a big crack in your beautiful counter.
So how do you protect against that?
First of all, install your dishwasher with the insulation it came with... And don't let your wife use a crock pot right above the same spot on the corrian counter top, otherwise it will crack and no amount of super glue will ever hold it. This may be one of the main reasons why we needed new countertops in the first place...
So, wood is pretty good at insulation, but if you have a steam leak out of the dishwasher in the back or just in the front of the door, the wood will get hammered with hot steam.
Epoxy to the rescue! and some aluminum for good measure.
Go to homedepot again and buy a 2'x2' piece of sheet aluminum. It might be by the roofing section of the store.
You have your wood for the sink upside down and coated in epoxy. Now next to the sink put a bunch more epoxy where the dishwasher ends up. And press the aluminum into the sticky epoxy.
Bring the epoxy all the way to the edge of the counter. This is where the steam from the dishwasher is mostly likely going to hit.
Throw some weights on top of the aluminum and wait a day for to cure.
The miter is not done. But all the tricky bits of the sink is figured out.
Let's talk about counter top miter bolts.
Let's say you want to clamp two pieces of wood together, but you don't have edges on your wood (like they are backed up into a wall)... How do you clamp them while your joinery glue up is going?
You carve out some bone shaped holes and you use a long threaded rod that fits in the bone shape with enough room for a nut on the end and a wide skinny washer out of 1/4" steel on both ends. You just invented counter top bolts.
The bolts will pull on the shoulder of the bone shape and pull your glue up together.
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It's pretty clever when it all comes together.
If you buy counters from the store they come with these bone shapes cut into the counter already. We have a router, we can make our own! You can buy a counter bolt miter template online, or draw your own. The template does help build confidence that you aren't going to screw it up too bad, so get the template or 3d print one if you want. Or lay the bolt in the nearly full extended position on a piece of paper and draw a template. Keep in mind that your wrench needs to have room to wiggle on both ends.
Also your cabinetry will likely get in the way when you are tightening this upside down.
And you can use this for doing the giant glue up of the island, but we'll cover that in a bit.
Anyways... cut out the bone shape halves with the router to just a bit deeper than the thickness of the washer rectangle on the bolt. I think mine I did about 1/2" deep.
What about some tendons or dowels in the joinery? Go for it! I borrowed a Feztool Domino for the project and I borrowed a Biscuit joiner tool.
In hind sight, I was probably fine with just the biscuit joiner thing, but I ended up spending 100$ on Feztool tendons to use with the domino.
The domino did not give me a perfect height line up. It was close... but the waviness of these long pieces of wood, still added like 1/64" movement here and there. Shims right as it is gluing up is probably the best, or sanding afterwards.
Try as I might I couldn't get it perfect, so I ended up needing to sand the transitions a bit.
I put 4 or 5 dominos along my miter and I had to cut a corner off the tendons so I could push them in with access only from the east side as it was all coming together.
I slatthered everything in wood glue and tightened it up. I was super nervous on this part.
It came together really well and I laid down in the cabinet and tightened up the counter bolts.
For a few thin gaps that remained, I dripped some more glue into the gaps, with a piece of masking tape underneath.
With the miter done, I could now do the final mounting of the sink. The sink was off while the miter was slid together.
I laid on my back under the sink and tightened all the under mount sink mounting hardware.
Then I used clear silicone to address the gap between the sink and the epoxy. I also used clear silicone for the sink hardware interface.
Note: Clear silicone doesn't unstick very easily. How do you get it off the surface of UV clearcoat paint without marring your beautiful countertop?
First of all, clean up with acetone or mineral spirits or rubbing alcohol while you are applying or use masking tape better in the first place.
If you still left a thumbprint of silicone somewhere, use a ... LEGO! Slide one of these guys on your counter top and it should slice off the silicone. Take your time and be careful.
Use a plumb-bob or tie a string to a nut and dangle it below the center of your sink hole.
Line things up. Get your in-sink-er-ator dispostal installed. Use plumbers putty. If you are lucky you won't need more plumbing hardware. Good luck.
Get a square cut with your oversized protractor and drop it in right?
Welp, the room's not square so that doesn't work. And you are extending a live edge counter top! How do you do that?
Do your best to line up the live edges. Sanding will take care of the last 1/8th of an inch. The bottom of the live edge taper and the top need to come together.
Using the domino and tendons doesn't help too much because you don't have room! I cut dominos holes and cut my tendons to just over 1/8" longer than the hole. I cut the final piece of wood to fit in this last spot with 1/8" of wiggle room left and right.
After I had all these cuts figured out, I still had to reshape the thing to a trapezoid because the wall came in at a weird angle. Like 3/8" shorter in the far corner of the room compared to the sink side of the wood.
Oof.
And after the glue up, it wasn't lined up veritically perfectly everywhere on this spot. 1/64" to 1/32" height difference along this edge.
Deciding how much to cut off each of these 25" wide slabs took a lot of thinking.
I ended up going with 14" for the width of the center slab, and the other two soaked up the difference. I had to cut off at least 2 inches from each slab because of the taper going on to the blunt ends of the board.
The missus didn't want/need a live edge on the west end of the island, so that made it so there were no miter cuts or miter bolts required.
I did some test cuts with Saw #1. And it was not perfectly square, and it walked a bit.
I ended up doing the first cut 4 or 5 times, trying to figure out the tool and the fence and to get a nice sharp cut.
This is when I initially bought Saw #2. Finally with Saw #2, squared at the factory with a new Diablo ripping hardwood blade I got the cut I wanted.
Reading some forums, I could have left it at 89.5 or 90.5 degrees on the angle and just did the next cut in the other direction and it would have lined up perfectly. I didn't figure that out for this project, and I wasn't sure the orientation of the center section...
Which side did the missus want up and in what direction... etc.
After that was all decided, it was time to do the domino cuts and the glue up.
I had the previous island cover on it the whole time. This was 3/4" plywood laying in the island, suspended on a metal frame I had welded some time back.
I lined everything up, marked where I wanted dominos, like every 15 inches or so.
I dry fit everything, and I was pretty excited about it. I had borrowed some 3' clamps from a friend from church. I could have also borrowed some pipe clamps.
But what about the live edges? How do you keep those safe while using them to put pressure to squeeze together?
Well, it was shipped in some thick cardboard and foam strips protecting the live edge. That would probably work. I could throw an extra strip or two of cardboard or foam strips where I was clamping and give it a go.
I have a bunch of webbing/ratchet straps for holding things on top of my car. I could probably get those to work.
And then to get it to line up vertically, the dominos should help, but I also used some off cuts of the hardwood to give me a nice straight-edge I could clamp to, also.
I should have planned for the glue to drip more. I ended up cleaning in the cabinet afterwards instead.
The youtubers doing big glue-ups rotate the wood 90 degrees, put the glue on vertically and then squish together. I didn't have a good way to do this, and I didn't even consider it much until afterwards after I found out how hard it could be.
I put a 6" gap between the three pieces, and I painted the glue on the whole thing as fast as I could, and then dipped the tendons in glue and shoved them in.
I shoved it all together and got the cardboard and foam strips and the ratchet straps ready to go. It was all a mad dash.
The glue wasn't giving up much space as I put the clamps on. I got it tight and crossed my fingers and left the room.
The next morning it was looking so good. My gaps were less than 1/32" in the worst places. There was only 2 places where the glue didn't already fill the gap completely.
I dribbled glue into the voids and put a layer of glue in any low spots. The ambering in the glue looked so good next to the color of the wood.
The dominos didn't get a perfect line up on top. :[ . Well. That's what sanding and surface treatment is for. It was close... Like < 1/64", and perfect in many places. But the missus did not approve of how it lined up, but she did like how the gaps turned out generally. I was so worried that the glue wouldn't compress or shrink up right. This is my first big glue up ever! I got pretty lucky and I got a lot of good advice from better woodworkers than myself.
Also getting the squares cut out of the oven area was tricky, too. I could do straight cuts, but for the final bit, how do you get it done perfectly?
I finished the sink and then I was so confident with the router, I decided I would do the final pass on the oven cutout with the router and the fence. I didn't have my helper with me and it was late, and I screwed it up. I only gouged the final piece by 1/4", but it was close to a disaster. That kind of decided that I would have one side 1/8" thinner than the other side, with the final gap between all of it set to 30" exactly.
I went back to my trusty Saw #2, and straight edge setup and sliced off the marred notch. It looked so much better now, and it was sharp.
Also if I was doing this again, I would have had a 2" overhang to the back of the oven, so there was more room for the super big cord to go. Right now I have to get the cord to stuff under the drawer of the oven just right.
I cut as far as I could with the circular saw, then I used an oscillating tool to finish the cut. Then I came back with a series of sanding to get it down to flush.
The end cap of the longest boards needed rounding. So I used the same 1/8" router bit and a small router to put a round on all of those ends, very carefully.
Semigloss? Matte? Gloss? Which thickness/viscosity did I need?
I wandered Woodcraft for a while looking at products and eventually got the semigloss. It looked too matte later on the test piece I put it on. And it was a good bit thinner than the factory coating of uv paint.
I was running out of time to get this figured out. Company was coming in town soon. I needed to be done.
I gave myself a 2" window between strips of blue masking tape to sand down the high/lows to transition to each other.
At first I started with sanding blocks, but I quickly switched to a power sander. I have to use a plugin one. The battery powered ones are only for 15 minute jobs. Anything longer than that, you need some real oomph behind the motor.
I held it up at a 30 degree angle or so and carefully sanded the transition down to nothing. When done, I could slide my finger across the boards and not notice a lip anywhere. After vacuuming it up and wiping off any excess dust, I then painted in the clear coat polyurathane on it.
Two coats of poly and it was looking really good. The coat still penetrated the wood grain a little much compared to the ultraflat finish of the factory finished UV paint... but it was close enough. One day I'll sand everything and recoat everything.
So the cabinetry next to the oven was high compared to the cabinetry for the rest of the island. This was less of an issue with the plywood top, because it was segmented at the oven connection. No more! Now we are looking one giant piece of laminate slab.
My laser level was no where to be found. I made do with a 4 foot level for a while; the whole time I was wishing for my nicer level. A month later I bought another laser level. I'll probably find the original one when we move out of the house, but for now, it isn't worth the time to try to find where it went.
After marking the level line everywhere, I worked on it with the oscillating tool. I probably should have just taken my battery powered circular saw and did all of it with that. I was thinking at the time I would have less dust flying everywhere with the oscillating tool. In the end, it took forever and looked kind of terrible, but this edge was facing the oven and noone would know about it other than me. Eventually I got the slab to be level and not have any high spots in the cabinetry that it was rocking on.
Now that the island was coated and done, it was in place and pretty heavy, but not heavy enough to be hip checked.
How do you secure it down? With cleats! I had cleats already made for the countertop for the 3/4" plywood. So I knocked those off with a hammer and installed them on the underside of the new island countertop.
After many moons of being in the house's temperature range and humidity, some minor issues have cropped up. Some knots under the UV paint seem to be shrinking or growing more. This is more reason to do a hard sanding everywhere and to recoat with polyurathane.
Also within a week of it being done and company came into town, a lego artifact was being shown off up stairs. It was the size of a basketball and it was fumbled above the countertop. Doh! It left a decent dent in the hardwood.
I researched a bit on how to fix it and then held back and decided that it would get dinged up and get some more character over the next couple of years and then get sanded down and recoated and it would be fine.
I just dread sanding it because I have to sand it in place. It's not leaving the room anytime soon and I'll have to hang plastic everywhere before the sanding so that I don't have to get fine saw dust out of very crevice in the room or wipe down every wall again.