Countertop Fix, Part:2

 My kitchen counter tops are in a transitional stage. I plan to replace them one day soon with some tile or maybe even granite. I would like to tile the kitchen floor before we get to that project though. So to hold me over, I've taken on a little "ghetto fabulous" kitchen counter re-do. I shared with you how I did a test run with my little section of counter, in this post. I decided it was high time to get the rest of it finished. When I went back to the store where I originally bought the gray colored "stone" spray paint, I sadly found out the color had been discountinued. Whoops, what am I going to do now? One side of my kitchen is already done and "enviro teched" (clear shiney hard coat) over.  I hunted around and around town for the same paint color, but I didn't have any luck finding it. I picked out the closest thing to it.  Once I got them next to reach other I realized it was definitely not close enough, I will have to re-do the first section I did. Oh Well.

Here is my step by step on how I painted my "stone" counter-tops.

    BEFORE                                                                AFTER

*Note: If you saw my first post on painting my counter tops you may be have noticed they are not as shiney as my first run at it. I have not completed the "glass shine" step yet. I will get to that explaination soon...

I taped off my sink and protected it with some plastic bags, as well as covering the cabinets in plastic. You will want to protect anything close because you are using spray paint inside....eeek. The cabinets above were not close enough to the spray so they were not covered, and they still stayed paint-less during the process.

I used Glidden's Gripper primer in gray to coat the entire laminate counter top.

I popped the cap off the "stone" flecked spray paint, and gave it about three to four even coats. Since its spray paint I had to be very careful to keep the can at an equal distance from the counter the entire time. It is easy to get uneven circles that will make it obvious that you used a spray paint. Doing at least three coats will help to ensure that the application is even. I stayed about 8 inches away from the surface of the counter top.

 

 I let it sit overnight to thoroughly dry. Then I got out a fine paint brush and some clear gloss polyurethane that I had left over from when I refinished our hardwood floors. This is the step where I COULD have used Envirotex to get a glassy look like I did on the other side of my kitchen. It would have been about $100 to do this step so I held off for another day. I will do that step very soon in the near future.

 

 

Envirotex was used on this section (above) to get a high gloss look. It is also much more protected and durable after using Envirotex.

This is how it looks with ONLY high gloss polyurethane, not Envirotex:

 

I did about 3 coats of the polyurethane, and let each coat dry for at least 4 hours before starting the next. I left the back-splash alone, just primed it. I plan to do a bead board back-splash soon.

 

So there you have it, my cheap little counter top re-do. Although its still not finished.