I've spent the past 3 nights (What has turned into the job after my job) building the melamine forms that will be used for the 4 concrete slabs that will become our countertops. A few tips I learned in the process:

1 - this stuff is very difficult to cut without the right blade. I bought a fine toothed circular saw blade I planed to to use to cut the 4x8 sheets of melamine to size. I bought a similar blade for my table saw with the intention of using the table saw to rip the 2" pieces I'd need for the sides of the forms. The circular saw never got all the way through the 4' side of the sheet. I ended up taking one sheet to Lowes and having them rip half of it into 2" strips and attaching those directly to the 4x8 sheets to create the forms.

2 - Taping before caulking is a pain but very much worth it. I taped the sides of the caulked joints and then removed the tape after applying the silicone. This was suggested in almost every book, article and reference I saw when researching this process. While I was doing it I wondered if it could possibly be worth the trouble but after removing the tape I was amazed at how clean it left the edges.

We're using the countertop mix from Quikrete (had to special order it from Lowes.) It was a little over $10 per 80# bag but easier and probably cheaper than rounding up the different additives from various internet retailers. A local concrete company gave me a bag of polypropylene fibers just for asking (they normally deal in large quantities and concrete delivery.)

The weather is looking like rain later today but I'm hoping to mix and pour concrete tonight or tomorrow. It's been up around 100 degrees during the day here but its very humid. Anyone think I should worry about the temperature effecting the curing of the concrete?

More pics of the process coming soon....

For now... I think we've decided on this for our backsplash