Liven Up Those Old Kitchen Countertops

Are you getting bored with your plastic laminate kitchen countertops? One way to liven them up, and give them a more contemporary look, is to give them a decorative hardwood edge. The job is relatively simple (in principle, if not in practice), and it requires no special tools outside of a router.

Adding a hardwood edge can do more than update a counter. It’s a very slick way to repair nicked or peeling edges, two common problems with well-worn countertops.

Although there are a few different ways to get the job done, one of the easiest is shown in the sketch. Basically what you will do is rout out a rabbet along the top edge of the counter. You’ll then glue a strip of hardwood into this rabbet, and rout the strip to a decorative profile.

OK, those are the generalities, here’s how to tackle the job step by step.

First of all, you’re going to need a router, plus a rabbeting bit. Any old router will do the job, but make sure your bit is carbide-tipped, with a ball-bearing pilot. They are made in various sizes. You want one that will cut a half-inch rabbet. Most hardware stores should sell them.

Chuck the bit in the router, and adjust the router depth to one-half inch. This will control the vertical depth of your rabbet front to back, so you are now set to cut a one-half-by-one-half-inch rabbet automatically. Making the cut is simple, but unfortunately, gaining free access to make the cut, often isn’t.

Because the base of your router won’t let you cut right up to walls, you’ll have to remove your countertops from the cabinets. Countertops are usually secured with a few screws driven up from inside the base cabinets. Just remove these, and the countertop will lift off, unless, of course, there’s a sink in it. If there is, you’ll have to disconnect the sink and remove it. This is the hardest part of the job.

Once you have your countertop out where you can work on it, you are ready to make your cut. There are two tricks to this procedure.

1--Don’t try to make the cut all in one pass. This will overload the router and cause problems.

2--Make your first cut a very light one, and make it backwards. What do I mean by backwards? Well, normally, when you use a router to make an edge cut, you run it from left to right across the front of the work as you face it. This means you are feeding the router against the direction of bit rotation, and in most cases this produces the best cuts.

If you try this on the edge of a laminate countertop, however, you will almost surely tear little chips out of the laminate edging. Taking a light cut, and taking it backwards, running the router from right to left, will solve that problem.

Just use a very light touch and make a very light cut. I emphasize the word light, because if you start making a heavy cut, or even a medium cut, the router will try to dig in and cut even deeper, and it will get away from you.

Once you have made a light backward cut along the full length of the countertop, you can then finish up by taking a few more light cuts in the usual direction, from left to right.

Now you simply glue a half-inch-square strip of hardwood into the rabbet, using ordinary yellow glue. The wood you use is up to you. Maple gives you a nice light-colored edge and it’s very hard so it stands up to abuse. Cherry and walnut are good for darker edging. I have used ash with good success.

At any rate, apply glue to the rabbet, set your strip in place and secure it with clamps or with several strips of tape until the glue dries. Use miter joints wherever the strip goes around a corner.

Once the glue has dried, route the edge of the strip to a decorative profile. The chamfer and quarter round shown in the sketch are two good, simple choices that stand up well to typical kitchen abuse.

Best finish for the new edge is a good varnish. I like to brush it on, let it soak for about 20 minutes, then wipe off the excess. Repeat this operation the next day and the day after that and the job is complete.