Chip repair
Stone countertop besides its beauty is hard and durable. But sometimes it happens to be damaged. Methods of repair are described in repair section. In this article I want to focus on repairing a small chip in stone countertop. It is the easiest damage in stone countertop to repair the damage when. You can do this yourself at home. You do not need specialized equipment. Whole repair can take us up to five minutes. Only you need to buy set designed for this purpose.
What I need to buy, the where and how much it cost?
You need to buy chip repair kit, which is available in most of stores with stone accessories (such as: Home Depot or Sears) or online. Price could be from $25 to $60.
There are two major kits:
Granite & Marble Chip Repair Kit – contains: epoxy, masking tape, tongue depressors, razor blades, latex gloves, stone sealer and an instruction sheet.
ProCaliber Granite & Marble Acrylic Repair Kit – contains: LCA Gel Syringe, dispensing tips, sandpaper, small LED curing light, polish paste packet and microfiber polish cloth (enough material for 5 to 10 repairs).
How does it work?
If you decide to ProCaliber, repair will involve of applying the gel and then use special light (which is included to kit) on applied gel. And then you have to polish it.
If you chose the second set we have enough material to perform more than 50 chip repairs. Repair involves mixing two components, and then applying the resulting gel to chip. At the end you should polish the surfaces. In the purchased kit there are 2 containers, separate them doing nothing. After we mix them, we produce substance, which will get hard. Therefore it is important not to mix the entire contents of the containers at once but only just as much as we need. Then we need to apply created substance on the chip. What causes it dry and get hard. Then we are only need to wait for full hardening and polish it.
What I can fix by this way?
Using can fix chip repair kit you can fix stone surface damage such:
- chips
- nicks
- scratches
- gouges
- cracks
- smaller holes
You can repair in this way chip in:
- surface of granite, marble and other stones countertop with any color,
- edge of countertop,
- Kugel ball,
- acrylic things,
- fiberglass things,
- ceramic tiles
You cannot fix bigger damages this way.
It is very possible to chip granite countertop eventually it lead to a crack and then you need replace whole countertop. That can cost $1000 for average size kitchen. You can spend on it not more than $30, using the described kits and you can fix the chip permanent. This job not requiring a big knowledge and experience in stone countertops repair. Therefore it is a good way to cheaply and personally fix minor damage in expensive stone countertop. As you can see having minor damage in countertop does not necessarily means a costly repair.