How to Cut Granite Countertops: A Step-by-Step Guide
Hunting to slash new granite countertops for your kitchen area? The tools demanded are not terribly unheard of or considerably unique from tools for reducing sheet goods like MDF, for, say, bookshelves or a closet makeover. In terms of competencies, if you can cut a sheet of plywood straight, there’s no explanation you just cannot understand how to reduce granite similarly as straight.
What to Know Just before You Start off Reducing Granite Countertops
Caveat #1: Use a Experienced
This is a major caveat. Though the genuine cutting of granite may well be Diy-in a position, format and templating kitchen counter tops is normally not the area of the DIYer. In truth, for execs, it is commonly reserved for a expert. Even the most very carefully framed kitchen wall versus which the counter will go has undulations and nuance, and invariably an inside corner that isn’t 90 levels, in particular in an aged household.
Most kitchen area set up specialists sub this operate out to experts. There are several reasons just to title a few:
- Fat: In even modest kitchens or kitchens with just an “L,” granite countertops are much too weighty for most remodeling crews to tackle properly.
- Risk: Granite is excellent as a countertop, paving stone, or Belgian block—the latter two getting quite Do-it-yourself-able—but, extra to its pounds is its price and brittleness. A damaged countertop not only fees money it expenses months to reorder. Yet again, most professionals reserve this for a expert.
- Skillset: Even though most remodelers have the expertise and resources to slice granite, the procedure requires its individual set up, dust or h2o handle actions, and assurances for precision. Set an additional way, reducing and handling granite is an “all or nothing” affair. Get the sink cutout completely wrong by ½ inch and the sink is both off-centre or it hits the foundation cabinet when you consider and fall it in the hole—or equally!
Caveat #2: Some Kitchens Might be Do-it-yourself-equipped
Even so, not every kitchen is a maze of 6-foot-broad islands or inside and outside corners.
A galley kitchen area with a brief, straight run may possibly be truly worth contemplating Diy-ing. Maybe if you can get an off-minimize or sale-price tag slab, it’s well worth a shot. But, even now, it is granite. The inexpensive things isn’t affordable.
A kitchen area countertop with a straight operate or a bar leading, ornamental shelf, or breakfast counter can be made from stone, and it will assistance to know how to lower a granite slab to do or oversee these kinds of tasks.
Do Your Prepwork
- Granite can be cut damp or dry. In both situation, it is a mess, so set up a do the job spot, with tables that can help the granite, the place the function won’t affect other areas of the home.
- Slicing wet (which will almost certainly demand purchasing or renting a wet-cutting saw) will create a slurry that desires to be hosed off. Slicing dry results in a dust cloud that will travel.
- Ear, eye, and dust protection are important.
- The primary cutting tools for granite are a circular observed or an angle grinder.
How to Slash a Granite Countertop
- Set up granite on a stable function area and clamp it down.
- Measure and mark the slice line. To lessen chip-out, protect the slash line with blue tape. Remeasure and mark the tape.
- If applying a circular noticed, blue-tape the shoe of the noticed to minimize the hazard of metallic-on-granite scratching.
- If utilizing a grinder DO NOT take away the guard. A face defend is recommended.
- Established up a straightedge guide like a shoot board.
- Employing an angle grinder is a freehand-cut method.
- Whichever resource you use, hold the instrument going, but do not pressure the software. This will minimize chip-out and provide the cleanest reduce. If the tool is genuinely laboring, make the lower in two passes.
- Some installers back again-slice the slab. In other terms, they make a 2-inch kerf at the finished conclusion of the slash, so the granite does not substantially chip or crack on completion of the slash.
- Use an angle grinder with polishing pads to clean up the observed marks on the cut edge and to “break” or micro-bevel the 90-diploma reduce edge to soften it. Pads get started at 50-grit and go up to 3000 or far more relying on the smoothness and sheen sought after.
- The process is largely the identical to slice granite countertop for a sink. To changeover directions, holes are drilled in each individual corner of the granite slab at the sink location and plunge cuts are necessary to enter the granite floor.