I just have to post a photo of my 1'st paying countertop job this year. Yes it is Laminate, Yes it is only 3/4" thick, and Yes there's no backsplashes. My customer had a very small budget!



Although, I have been very busy, but it has been FREE work. My son and I just finished building his kitchen and bar cabinets and as soon as his Avonite gets here we will be starting on the tops. Avonite Silver Comet polished with a cove for the kitchen, and the bar and dinning table is Avonite New Caldron with a Cat Eye inlay of 1/2" round 1" X 1" tall cylinders’  Bar top polished W/cove and dinning top polished.

Yes work is slow here, but my road has a lot to do with it, just type in 1531 W Hamlin Rd 48309 in to Google and go to the street view and you will see what my road looked like last summer. Now it takes you to Rochelle Park Dr, my shop is the red brick building 600 ft West on the South side. I kinda like the guy holding the stop sign on a road closed to through traffic and a oneway street. Well the road was finished last November, but it is closed again this summer because they are building a Roundabout at S Livernois Rd. They claim the road will be open mid July, but they haven't finished the East side of the Roundabout yet and still have the West side to do.

"Small buget" I can see why, they spent it all in a big a$$ sink.
Dani,  my income level took a nose dive too in the last 2 weeks.  landscaping at home and trying to get more work.  the next week of lost income will be totaly my fault,  a mans gotta fish you know, tis the season .
Hope things pick up for ya!

I guess it's better than nothing. We would be out of business as well if they closed our street. Hope it gets finished soon.

The city said they had a plan and it was to have all the the road finished by the end of Nov. last year. The road was oneway west bound for 12 wks and oneway east bound for 10 wks, but closed to through traffic. If drove from Livernois to Crooks and didn't stop at at a business on the way the cops would give you a ticket. They actually stoped every car and asked where were you comming from, if you didn't give the right answer you got a ticket. The real problem was because my shop on Hamlin Rd is between a river and an ex-way. If I went to the corner store to a sandwich it was a 4 mile trip to get back to my shop.

Here is what my road look like the first 6 or 7 weeks before they closed the road to through traffic.

This is an update after 2yrs of construction this is my road today.



I do have a little work now building drawers for foreclosed homes. It seems to be people like taking the top drawers to all the cabinets when they move out of the house.
I just wanted to post the freebie job I did with my son Chris the first part of this year.The job was 15 kitchen cabinets, 4 bar cabinets, 2 table bases, and 5 sheets of Avonite.
This is the kitchen. Cabinets are Arborite Silver Brush Metal and the top is Avonite Silver Comet polished w/cove. My son did most of the polishing

This is the dinning room and bar area. The cabinets and table bases are Arpa Red Burl, the bar and table are Avonite New Caldron with a Cat Eye inlay all polished and the bar has a cove also.







This is my son's House and he did say Thanks Dad. He saved for 2 years to buy the material, and lived with a gutted kitchen all that time

Now if I could sell a job like this and paid money it would be great.

Nice Job, Dani.  I hope that the new road brings more traffic and business into your shop.

Johnny C

sweet...love the inlay design..stunning

Nice work. How did you make the edge insert? It is difficult to see exactly what shape it is.

Andy

Here are some cut offs. I tried to talk Chris into lighting the inlay with neon, but didn't want to wire through the floor, so I put the pieces on white to make them brighter. The inlay pieces are 7/8" W X 1" H so the edge is 2" It took me 3 hours to cut and glue all the strips for the bar and table. A total of 32 ft of edge

Dani,
Very beautiful work, and if your son forgets to tell you, "Your a Great Dad". And when your area turns around, you've got some shop time due you from your son.....

Dani,
Beautiful work as always.

Yeah, there are some fabricators who really "get" the material. They understand it like a poet understands language and meter. See it like a painter sees light and color.

Dani's one of those.

Wow, that looks time consuming.

Wow!!  I wanna do a cool edge now!!  Very cool!

Awesome work Dani. Its always a pleasure to view your craftmanship, attention to detail, and  visually stunning projects! You are truly a master!

Wow, I love that edge!

Posted By Andy Graves on 11 Sep 2010 12:08 AM
Wow, that looks time consuming.

Andy

Not really.  To do 32ft it takes about 450 blocks. From start to finish (glued on the deck) it takes a little over 7 hrs. At a quarter per ft that makes move than profitable. I have done many tops with that edge. Here is how the radius corner goes together. 



This is a finished radius corner from the back side. Lenny you should know the 2 colors I used



This is my kitchen top same edge.





This is my vanity top same edge back lit with Neon

Now here are 2 very time consuming edges. This is my most time consuming edge it took me a week to do the edge on a L top with 6' of edge. All the blocks are polished on all sides except the back and all the blocks are totally chip free, they were cut with a 150g Diamond wheel then the ends were polished.



This is one of my Art-Deco edges






Thanks everyone. I have always loved what you can do with Solid Surface.

Dani, Really nice work.. I enjoy looking at your designs and attention to detail. Mostly you show what can be done with traditional solid surface tools and ingenuity.

That art deco edge was an award winner, wasn't it, Dani?