I've put a hot griddle pan (yes, I know!) down on the kitchen worktop and now have a bubble in the surface around 10mm long and 5mm wide. It's a couple of mm high and has a fine crack across the top of it. The worktop is a one of Formica's finest textured in black and grey.
Anyone able to advise on a repair other than 'replace it all'. I don't have an angle grinder, but I do have a couple of cans of WD40...
Management has stayed calm. So far.
Do you have a shed?
Say 'I know how to stop that happening again' then use a router to cut a few parallel, equally spaced, 5mm wide, 200mm long round bottomed grooves, one of which removes the bubble, and set some 5mm diameter x
200mm stainless steel bars into the surface. One invisible repair, one hot pan stand and it all looks as though it was planned.Colin Bignell
Router, set to the thickness of the formica. Remove damaged section.
Glue in patch taken from spare bit of worktop kept for just such eventuality.
Alternatively, rout a bit deeper and over a larger area and fit a marble insert that doesn't mind hot pans being rested on it.
Erm, there is no spare bit of worktop.
That, and Colin's stainless steel bars idea, sounds interesting. I had originally thought of letting a stainless steel panel into the top but was concerned about heat transfer into the worktop making things worse.
The three options also concern me when it comes to sealing them against water sloshing around on them. Management likes to get things wet when she's cleaning...
No, but there's some decking I could sheet over and then crawl underneath.
Even if there had been, how do you remove the Formica from it without damage?
I'm sorry, but you are in for a big job. Unless there is some miracle material for repairing laminate arrived in the last five years, the whole top is the only solution. Brian
Have you ever tried to do that sort of thing without chipping formica?. The other problem is that if its actually laminate on some board or other, you get to find exactly where the glue did not work very well.....
Brian
I used a piece of spare edging strip kept for such eventualities.
Simple. Pick up telephone, call insurance company. That's assuming you have accidental damage cover.
Mike
Rout it from the back to remove the core, rout it from the front to remove the formica.
Or use an angle grinder.
Not even in the offcuts bargain bin at a DIY shed?
Bed it in silicone sealant to hold it in place and then run a bead of sealant round the top edge.
The correct answer.
:-)
Sounds like the way to go.
We are covered, and I could do that. The only problem is that come renewal time they'll most likely up the premium to a level where they recoup their outlay and more on top.
For that kind of reason I treat household insurance as 'disaster' insurance rather than 'put c*ck-ups right' insurance.
I think it should be fine with a down cutting spiral cutter.
Route it from the back?
As per my original post: I don't have an angle grinder, but I do have WD40. Reckon it might slide it off if I use enough?
Oh, but I don't have an off-cut either...
Just what we did:-)
Going back to the original problem.... is work top finishing actually Formica these days? 1970 maybe!
Couldn't the *bump* be re-softened with judicious application of heat, a spot of glue injected and then cramped or weighted back to being flat? The small crack isn't likely to be any worse than the joint around a repair.
regards
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