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Epoxy Dirty Pour Technique On Formica Countertops Tutorial | DIY Countertop Remodel Ideas

Feb 27, 2020
Are you ready to see how Gauri products can transform your space? But first let's look at the before images. It's guys here that we cover the floors and

countertop

, so this video will show you the step-by-step process of how to recreate this look. in your space using a DIY Ligardi

countertop

kit okay guys it's time to prime and I'm just going to go over a quick recap of what we've done up to this point so the first thing we did was square the edges took a router to it . I never want to go over a square edge, always make sure the edges are rounded.
epoxy dirty pour technique on formica countertops tutorial diy countertop remodel ideas
The next thing we did was make sure the counters were level. These had to be propped up and tilted up because this was flowing off the counter so you have to make sure your counters are level or the res will flow to the lowest point obviously the second thing is the plastic for everything off the floor , places where things will drip and hit the cabinets and then also, since we have a bar edge sticking out here, we had to create a dam that we just used. We taped it up with cardboard so it can catch any drips that get on the bottom cabinet and then the last thing we did was apply latex caulk, paintable caulk on all the back seams because there's a gap there and if we don't fill it, it will roll up. running all over the cabinets in there because it's finished there so it's time to prime it's already mixed we're going to use a roller tray a 3/8 nap roller we've already decided it's going to remove all the loose hairs first.
epoxy dirty pour technique on formica countertops tutorial diy countertop remodel ideas

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epoxy dirty pour technique on formica countertops tutorial diy countertop remodel ideas...

I'll do that since we're doing a messy

pour

and we're going to tape our edges. I'm going to go around and hit all the edges first so they can start to dry, so we're going to soak this roller and I don't want to just start at the edge. I'm going to take a little bit off the roller and then we'll start on the edge here. Now keep in mind that if you are going over white like a dark black counter, you may need to hit the edges twice because you really want to get a solid color, whatever primer you are using, this covers very well, so which we probably won't apply it twice, but if it was black, we would want to leave it set for a minute and hit these edges again so the edges are ready now.
epoxy dirty pour technique on formica countertops tutorial diy countertop remodel ideas
I just want to be careful not to get any stains on my pants, but the first thing we're going to do is paint on this back edge where it is. We've done the caulking, now we're rolling out the top and then we're going to continue that process until we've finished coding all the counters into the primer, okay guys, so what I'm doing now is quickly hitting the edges. I'm not putting much on the roller and you'll see I'll start maybe right here, you can still see a little bit. We want to get this nice and white, so one quicker layer and that's it.
epoxy dirty pour technique on formica countertops tutorial diy countertop remodel ideas
We'll let this sit for about 45 minutes to an hour and a half and we'll get the edge of the tape nice and tight, so the next step is to tape our edges together to create a dam so the resident doesn't overflow until we remove the tape. tape. because you want to keep the same design on top and if we don't use masking tape it will flow over the edge and take away the design it won't look as cool as it does when you

pour

it so the way we do it we're just using tape of painter and it's been about an hour since we primed, so it's sticky, but it's not coming off or anything.
It's the perfect time to make the ribbon border. We want to make sure we are high enough above the counter. the resin doesn't reach the top and we push the tape in, so we'll do that on all the edges and then we'll do another beach. We have two strips of tape on all of them and then we want to make sure. We go around and really push this down, so you don't want it to separate. We want to get a good bond that way the resin won't flow under the tape, so now I'm going to go around and place the second strip of tape. on everything try to keep it at the same height so most of these will be fine as long as you tape it high, if you tape it too low the resin can get to the top of that tape and push it out but we are so high I'm not worried about any of these types of drops, the only thing I'm worried about is this inside edge where the tape is already tilting, so we're going to want to accept that and maybe even here too, so I'm just going to take a paint stick, I broke it in half, we're going to make one right there and this is just going to add rigidity to the edge of the tape, so they're basically there, we see that the resin might come out as we're covering it. and looking at it, if we notice other spots, we can always put a paint stick or something more rigid and tape it up to that edge to keep the tape from falling off, we're getting ready to pour the

dirty

pork counter, so, what do you want?
What we need to do is separate all the materials for this countertop, so we have three quarts of clear metallic

epoxy

right here which will equal about 50 grams of silver metals and then we have a gallon and a half of pigmented white

epoxy

and another three quarts of epoxy pigmented. white epoxy so we're going to treat this as one kit so we're going to need a 5 quart container to mix this up later and the first thing we want to do is always put a base coat on the

countertops

so it's only going to take 64 ounces of this gallon and a half and I'm going to mix it up so we can put a thin base coat on the entire counter, the ties will spread the base coat, I'm going to continue to get the With the rest of the batches done, what you're going to do is basically use a rolling pin of foam to move it, but it also has a squeegee in case you need to move it quickly because sometimes it is very difficult to move a small pile of epoxy all the time. from this side of the counter to the other side of the counter, that's what the squeegees are for and remember the point of this part is that we just want a thin coat of epoxy on all the

countertops

, this helps when we do the

dirty

pour for the rest.
So that the colors spread as we pour them, we are going to pour about five batches, but the batches spread quickly and level out faster if we have this thin layer of epoxy all over the surface, it doesn't take much either. on all surfaces of the counter notice how uniform this bead is that he poured, that's what you're looking for, you don't want to pour too much up here, too much down there, it's a pain, but if you have to transfer from one counter to another counter, so you're just trying to pour it evenly everywhere, use it like a chip brush or something if you need to get it in the corners and paint the edges or maybe go around behind the holes on the desk, sometimes you can use a chip . brush for that if you need to notice Tyler moved the bead out and it's just cross rolling right now and it's moving a lot of that bead toward the edges and again it makes it simple if you just dip your chip brush into the thickest material. and just paint that back edge and then it'll help level it out and there's even some places back here with words where it's not touching the tape yet, so we want to just fill them in, so notice on this edge that it's not going all the way down. on this edge, so I'm going to paint this edge a little bit so we can go a little deeper.
It doesn't have to be a lot of epoxy, we're just trying to cover it a little for any hair type. or some of the hairs come off the brush, we'll pick them up a little bit too, okay, so we have a thin layer of epoxy on everything and we notice that it's very thin, it's even a little bit thinner up here. it's down here okay everything is coated that's the most important part what we're going to do now this is the easiest way to explain this we're going to mix all the white and then we're going to mix all of the clear epoxy with the silver metallics , we're going to have one batch here and one batch here, we're going to take these two buckets and then we're going to do five batches of dirty pour, here's how We're going to do that, so it's a lot easier if you actually have a second drill with a second mixer. pallets.
We only have one, usually we have several, but now we're going to pour all this epoxy into this bucket and mix. All together as one large batch. I'm just tilting them up for a second because sometimes a lot of epoxy gets caught in these handles, so you just tilt them up for about five to ten seconds and then tilt them down. We are going to do the same with the transparent resin. Now what we want to do is get our silver metallics. We're going to pour the metal powder into the clear resin and what we're going to do is just spin it.
Let's turn the vacuum on for a second so there's not a bunch of metals in the air. You don't want to breathe in a lot of metals, so the vacuum will suck them up very quickly. I need to have the vacuum on when you're pouring in the powder and when you're mixing it, okay, now we have our whole part, a pigmented part a in this bucket, we have our metallic epoxy with our silver part a in this bucket, these are the accompanying parts B for these batches now all we have to do is pour our B parts, mix them together and make our batches, so that's what we're going to do, okay, the way we're going to pour these five batches is going to be pretty. random, so here are my five containers and I want to make about sixty-four ounces in each container, so I'm going to start by pouring white into each one, just a little bit of white;
It's going to be a little complicated as we transition. from one container to another, but we will clean them and they don't all have to match, that's the beauty of these dirty pores, they can be completely random, that's where you can really get artistic, let's take some silver and pour it in a little. of silver in each one and that is what we will do with our lot, going back and forth between white and silver. We will begin to disperse it in the cubes, mixing it a little in some parts and not mixing it in others. how we get these really cool dirty pour effects, now we're going to leave some silver here, we might want to play with that silver a little bit later, but I want to clean up the edges of these and then basically give them to Tyler, but this is how they're done the Dirty Poor batches, so before I start doing The Dirty Poor, I'm just going to run around a paint stick and draw out a design that I want to follow.
You do not have. to do this, but this will help you pour them, so I want to continue the design from the top down, so I'm going to make a pattern up here and at a certain angle, we have to be like this. So the more random angles you do, the more cool effects you get, okay, perfect, so that's what gives me something to start with now, since I have them, most of this money is full. Instead, I'll start there. to try to pour a small amount here, so I'm going to start there and work my way up to the top, so I just want to make sure I don't end up pouring so much up top that it becomes very, very thick.
I really want to see how much because we have a small area to cover versus down here it's a lot bigger, so I have a little bit left here. I'm going to save that for later if we want to add some really small veins. and we'll take another cube and now that our patterns are laid out, I can do it, I can flatten it a little bit and make it a little bit more fat, some kind of thicker veins, and I'm going to start starting at the other end. I started here, I got a lot of silver and if you notice at the end where the white was poured first, we have a lot of white, so I want to start over here and get a little bit more silver at this end, so now we have silver in that corner.
Silver here I'm going to do a little bit on this top here to get a little bit more silver out and again I want to make sure I don't pour too much in here, so I'm just looking at the top, we have silver. There's kind of a lack of money here, so maybe I want a port. I'll pour one of these Silver over here, it'll go and I'll go here because I have to be a big one because there's a lot of silver and look. how I'm doing I'm not pouring the same bill we want to go where it's low you can tell where it's in play here take here these are the spots I'm trying to fill now that I have About a bucket and a half left.
I want to be more precise with how I placed them, so I'm just going to go around and start filling in any of these low spots. You can tell they are thick, thick, very thin around here and no. It doesn't take much, so I'm just hitting those thin spots and you never want to pour a lot of product right on the edge of the tape, so notice I'm trying to keep it a little bit close there, but we have some compatible tape. there with the paint sticks, so now I'm on my last bucket. I really want to make sure I go and get any points that haven't been hit again.
These beads are very thick and will level out. they're going to flow and they're going to end up filling the counter, but I don't want to pour as much as if I left this spot here with nothing back there, it might not flow over there and level it all out, so that's what I'm looking for spots that don't have a poor account dirty or appear thin, as here we have a low point, abig thick spot, so I'm going to go around and hit those spots, all good guys. What I'm doing is pushing some of these to the edge, it's almost impossible to get our vein to go directly to the edge, so I want to do it randomly across the entire counter, so if you just hit one spot and do it. it might look different from the rest if we break it down and just mix them up.
They're like here, this just doesn't look natural. so I'm just going to blend that up there, run a finger through it, blend it down so that any point where there's like a semi-circle isn't like that, I'm not so worried about it because a time we pull the The tape will want to flow, but we'll hit a couple of these people who will spray some isopropyl on it, so it's always good to test it out and make sure it's a good fit, just a few little drops on the counter and we. I'll just go around and hit the entire surface so you can see when we first spray, it doesn't seem to do anything, but if you come back here, all of these cells are where the pigments have thinned out because they've mixed together. together a little bit and a lot of these will end up staying because the pigments thin out and we're using a white and a metallic silver, so I'm going to go ahead and do the top again.
I'm barely pulling the trigger. I don't want to miss it, I just want some drops of smog in there, okay, so after I spread isopropyl, I want to go back and add some dominant streaks of maybe solid silver, solid white and we can also use some of the residue. If they are left in the containers, when you have small amounts, you can get very fine drops of resin and you can really go on like these fracture veins, they all look like fractured veins and real stone. I can highlight them with the solid color or even another dirty pot with the small amount that's left, so I'm going to go ahead and start with a little bit of silver, so what I'm going to do is try to highlight this edge and pour in just a very fine drop of pure silver here, all good, guys.
I'm going to go through and use the rest of these cubes and again I could be more precise now that I don't have a lot of product here, so we're basically done with the design that We're glad we mixed everything together, we adjusted it with isopropyl alcohol to create those cells, so what we want to do is wait about half an hour to 40 minutes and we'll periodically check how thick it gets just by taking a little bit and if we remove it you'll see how it actually flows, it's very fluid here so it's too early so we want Let it become a little sticky so that when we remove the tape it does not slip and pull. the face design from the top to the floor so we want to try to keep this design without moving it that's the point of the tape and then when we pull it when it's sticky it doesn't want to flow as easily and it keeps that top with this look.
Well, it's been about 50 minutes since we finished the countertop. You really want to check it because depending on the temperature of your room, you may have to take it out a little sooner, but here's where we are. looking, we've been with that tape down, you can see it's starting to slowly move to the right, that means the top isn't really going to change, this will just start to flow over the edge, we'll brush it out a little bit and then We're going to keep the same design on top without ruining it, so we're going to start pulling the tape in all the places where you can see it's starting to slowly flow, but it's going to cover that edge.
They just have to make sure not to wait. too long until the residence starts to set too much and doesn't want to move at all and you're going to have some spots that we're going to have to hit with the brush because there will be thinner on the thicker spots, so after we remove the tape, what we're going to do is take the same brush that we used on the flood coat, basically, if it's really sticky, we can use a new one, just make sure you have some product on there before you start and we know what happens.
We have surface tension, so it just runs down and random drops, so we want to cover this entire edge and once you cover it, if you come here, I've already brushed it, everything will start to flow evenly and take. a little bit of that top design all the way to the edge so that a lot of these veins go down the face and it looks really cool, very simple, very quick and don't worry about messing up the design because it still goes on. to flow we just want to make sure that everything is coated on this front edge and we don't want to get to the top, we just want to work on the face and if you need product, let's say you don't have enough phone on something You can usually dip into these cubes because it's thin there so it's not getting hot and you can lift it over your heads if you need to, but we have a lot of product here to cover the edge.
We don't really have to do that, you can see all the color coming out of the face, this is just white when we did it before, now we have the veins going down the edges starting to show where they were too good, so the last thing we did. You're going to have to do it and you're probably going to have to do this for the next hour and a half, two hours tops, because periodically you just scrape off the bottom pips and this will start to settle enough where it stops. dripping and then you won't have to scrape it anymore, you really want to stay, make sure your edges are good, no runs, no missing stitches, so that's it again, let's hang out.
Make sure the edges are nice and then someone will stay here and periodically scrape those drips off for the next hour and a half or until it starts to settle to where it stops dripping. That way we won't have to come and stop. It drips on the bottom, so we're getting ready to put on the top layer. We re-coated these counters two days ago. They had to bring some painters in here, so these counters have been sitting for over 24 hours, so we have to scrape them off. We will use 320 grit because we are making urethanes. If you're doing epoxy, something like that, you can use a little bit heavier grit, it will remove all the scratches, but with our urethane you want to be sure.
We're doing 320 grit, 220 grit, something really fine that's not going to scratch it very much or make big scratches on this, so we're going to use a palm sander with a 320 grit vacuum, we're just going to hit the entire counter and then if you come here sometimes. its edges will hit the bottom edge like it can basically create a barrier and it just builds up there, so to eliminate that before they do their epoxy, we've sanded from here to here this bottom edge. We rounded it off a little while prepping the counter and you can see it didn't pile up at all.
We got some drips and stuff, we got scraped up, but that's a Sam, but it's no big deal, we didn't get a We built a product on the bottom, so we sanded from here to here around the bottom edge and now we let the resin flow well and don't pool up and here you can really see it in this. this corner is very very thick here, so we're going to be very careful when placing it whenever you sand the edges or the corners. I'll do these corners by hand because we never want to palm sand the top edges.
I'm going to hit this. very light, move slowly, keep moving, looking at it, making sure I'm not standing still and I'll show you the process, so like I said before, we want to get to these top corners by hand and we don't have to. a lot to just scrape that surface off, so that's it, so I made this section, obviously not this face, but running my hand along the bottom I don't feel any drips or bumps under there, so the face looks good . Okay, now we have no lips on the bottom edge and I'm going to continue this process by getting rid of all of this stuff.
Scan the entire counter and then we'll apply our matte urethane and one last thing when you're standing at the bottom. drip edges, you can use a heavier grit because you'll never see them, especially if you have a lot of thick drips, like 120 grit, even 80 grit, but I would always send your lip down first if you have a lip on the bottom. edge and then do your drip so I always do the edge and then you can change some heavier sand send that bottom edge okay phrase set now we're going to clean the counter. I'll just do a dry wipe with the rag. to get most of the dust off, make sure you get that bottom edge underneath, it always builds up a lot of death, we're just going to use clear denatured alcohol.
I'm going to wipe down the counter again, make sure you get your edges nice, so when you're done cleaning you're going to want to be able to wipe your hand on them, now dust off your hands or you don't want to feel any residue on the counter, so once you can swipe it doesn't wipe off the dust, you don't feel any chunks or Tabriz, it's basically ready to apply a top coat, you can see if I clean here with a lot of dust, if I go to where I clean, that's what we're looking for and then what is Tim.
The nice thing about our top layers is that they don't drip off the counter so we can literally get all the plastic off and all we have to do is run a strip of tape anywhere we can touch a wall or a finished piece and then we can get it right when we leave and we don't have to go back to work to take out plastic or anything so that's what we're going to do and we're going to show you how to tape. You already know the points where you could do it. touch with the roller and the top coat, so one of the most important things to do when you're recording is to make sure you put high tape.
If we put tape directly on the underside of the counter, this epoxy would have blocked the tape. inwards and when we go to remove it it just starts to break we would have to cut it so we always put high tape so when you pull it it's very easy you get a clean straight edge you don't have to cut it. Everything went well, so we have all the old tapes, so now all I'm going to do is take a strip of blue tape again anywhere where my roller can touch the finished wall or the paint and then we can get this out. just when we finish and you always want to go back and push down the bottom seal of the tape, bleed marks will appear, so we will finish this, we will clean all the plastic holder that way when we finish the top layer, we can come out fine, finally we are ready for the top coat, we're going to do our matte urethane, we also have gloss options, so if you want that glossy finish, we have those too, so clean. we made our tape, we have everything clean, so I'm going to use a roller tray and just a six inch roller of 3/8 nap that we've wrapped with tape, we would come off, removed all the loose fibers because I don't I don't want to have that on our top.
Tim already mixed my product now, when you're starting out, you want to take a second to soak your roller, just push that ear thing into the roller a little bit now. We'll do two coats of this matte because when you go over a glossy surface sometimes you'll see little spots of gloss even through the matte with one coat, so we'll do two coats, but the nice thing about the top coats is that we can coat them in about half a coat. hour, so we don't have to wait until the next day or until it sets, so what I like to do when I'm applying the top coat is put a little bit of product on the roll. one bead in the middle about 1 foot 2 feet and then we just roll it crosswise so I'm moving fast as I roll it out making sure we hit the face and the corners now.
I don't want to start rolling back when I have a crease in my roller from hitting that corner, so I want to flatten it out and then I want to know where I stopped and make sure I'm overlapping from the last section now that I'm re-rolling it. without applying any pressure, I just let the roller slide there and before I continue I want to look at different angles, make sure I don't have any roller lines, thick spots, missed spots, anything like that because you don't want to go down. the counter then comes back and then tries to hit a point, it will look different if you do that guys, really very simple, so I'm going to continue with this until the counters are ready and then we'll show you that we'll wait about halfway through. an hour and then we'll apply the second coat, okay, so we're ready for the second coat.
I don't know if you can catch it on camera, but it doesn't look wet and if I touch it it's not really sticky. It's a little tacky but not tacky, so this is the perfect time to reapply the second coat. You don't need to apply a second coat. We're just doing this to show you the process, so again the first layer is applied. Wait. about half an hour until it gets that opaque look and then you can apply your second coat and you have enough urethane to be able to do that. We'll still have some urethane left even after applying two coats and we're just going to apply it exactly the same way and it will go a little further, especially if they sand the first coat when they do the second coat.
So we finished the second coat and we have about eight ounces left, so you guys We'll have a lot to do with two coats ifyou want, so the last thing we're going to do is clean up this tape and then we're going to be done so we can get out. We'd have to go back and remove the tape or something. I'll come back and take photos when all the builds are done here, so Tim will remove the tape from the counter and you want to make sure the tape doesn't break and fall on the top layer, so he goes. slow and that's why we do a strip in a lot of the places.
If you enjoyed this video and are looking to transform your existing countertops, go to lagari calm and order your kit today.

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