Epoxy сountertop: step by step

As part of the planned kitchen renovation, the color of the bar countertop did not fit into the new room design vision, but at the same time, the bar counter itself was good.

I have been interested in the topic of epoxy countertops for a long time thanks to YouTube, collecting cider lids for about a year, and now, their time has come.

There were not enough lids accumulated to cover the entire countertop area - it would take at least three times more. Through experimentation, I decided to lay out all the current lids around the perimeter of the table - it was enough for only three rows of lids.

For the rest of the area, there were also several options - broken glass, mini bottles of alcohol in milled niches, but the filling thickness of the lids was a maximum of 10mm, and exactly that amount of resin was purchased, so I settled on the option with coffee beans - it should also look quite good.

I bought epoxy resin - the prices are steep, for 1 square meter and 1mm thickness, approximately 1.1kg of composition is needed (total epoxy+hardener). For my purposes, 8.4kg of the composition (Epoxy River) + varnish (Jeta Pro 5516) - 180 $ (2022-04-03).

First, we make a test pour to understand the process. It didn't go very well for me, the hardened epoxy was quite rubbery, it turned out that the proportions I took from memory did not match the instructions. But otherwise, everything was fine.

So, let's get started:

Step 1 - sand the countertop with an orbital sander, 120 and 240 grit.

Step 2 - degrease and paint (I used spray cans with gloss paint, coverage in 3 layers, I suppose it could have been simpler and better using regular enamel and a brush/roller, but I'm not sure).

Step 3 - assemble the formwork out of plastic (I took a wide corner piece from Leroy Merlin for framing niches and cut it along the fold line), glue it with sealant and tape just in case - both outside for fixation and inside for better separation of the plastic from the epoxy later (no release agent was used simply because I didn't have any).

Step 4 - glue the lids to the table - options range from glue to modeling clay, I used the same sealant, let the sealant dry (in fact, it turned out that even a day was not enough for my sealant at such thickness, but it didn’t really affect anything).

Step 5 - pour the first layer with coffee beans filled in the main part of the table. A minimal layer is needed so that the beans are fixed and do not float in the mass. Buckets from Leroy Merlin and a mixer from a Chinese stick - the best:

Step 6 - after ~2 hours, we pour the main filling layer - my epoxy allows pouring up to 4cm at a time, but I didn’t need that much, we wait a day for everything to polymerize and set. The lower the humidity in the room and the higher the temperature - the better the result and the faster this process happens. Just don’t mix different batches of epoxy in one container without cleaning it (I did).

Step 7 - sand the table with an orbital sander, from 240 to 500 grit under the varnish, it should just act as a protective layer and protect against mechanical/chemical and other household damages.

Here in the last photo, you can see spots - during sanding, air bubbles were found that could not be sanded away, I filled them with epoxy and sanded again.

Step 8 - spray with varnish, preferably thicker, because we will need to sand it as well. Along the way, we also repaint the sides.

Step 9 - sand and polish the varnish (600-5000 grit + polishing pastes), making sure not to remove all the varnish down to the epoxy, otherwise, we would have to start all over again.

And the final result:

In reality, several months of work, a bunch of resanding, repainting, and varnishing are behind the scenes, but everything comes with time and experience.