My countertop is chipped. What’s the best way to repair it?
Q: I have a Silestone countertop with a chipped edge. How do I find someone to fix the edge?
A: When a countertop chips or cracks, there are two ways to fix it: Hire a company that specializes in this work, or buy the same type of materials a pro would use and do it yourself. The pro solution, of course, costs more. But it is more likely to result in a repair that blends in visually and can’t be felt when you run your hand over the surface.
Barry Adkins, owner of Fix-It Countertop, which makes home visits in Maryland; Washington, D.C.; Northern Virginia; and central Florida, repairs chips in countertops made of quartz, solid-surface material and natural stone (such as granite). Silestone, along with brands such as Caesarstone and Cambria, is in the quartz category because it consists of quartz crystals and other ingredients in a resin binder. Solid-surface material, such as Corian, has a lower percentage of mineral content.
In all of these cases, Adkins said, his solution is to patch the chip with two-part epoxy designed for countertop repairs — not a general-purpose epoxy you might find at a hardware store. Pros buy supplies at companies that cater to their needs. For repairs on man-made materials, Adkins can type in the manufacturer’s color name and get a patch color that matches the main color of the countertop. There are also epoxy kits with different colorants so he can custom-match colors when a homeowner doesn’t know the brand or color name of a countertop.
Adkins charges a little under $300 to fix a chip smaller than a dime, plus a little extra for travel in out-of-the-way locations in the company’s service areas. Large repairs, up to the size of a quarter, cost more, in part because he often needs to apply the filler in two or three layers to avoid having it smear across the surface.
Tidy repairs are especially important with man-made countertop materials because they have a subtle texture that resembles a fairly smooth orange peel. Adkins can polish natural stone to make the sheen of a patch blend in, but if he does that with a man-made countertop, the spot looks shiny and becomes even more noticeable.
Homeowners can also buy two-part epoxy repair kits with small amounts of colorants, or kits that use other fillers, such as two-part acrylics and light-cured acrylics. Globalcom Tile and Granite/Marble Repair Kit, which lists for $19.99 on Amazon, is a two-part epoxy that comes with black, brown, blue and maroon gel dyes that can be used in combination or alone to get tones from nearly white to very dark.
Given that the homeowner kit is less than $20, does it make sense to spend more to hire a pro? Adkins says handy, experienced DIYers probably can patch a chip successfully, but he cautions that, as with anything, there is a learning curve. Especially when a chip or crack is in a prominent place, many homeowners decide it’s better to leave the work to someone who has made hundreds of repairs, rather than use the job as a first-time learning opportunity. “When two-part epoxy dries, it dries hard as stone,” he said, leaving little time for trial-and-error tinkering.
It doesn’t help that many of the kits lack detailed instructions. Amazon sells nearly identical-looking patch kits from three brands: Globalcom, Lanbokit and Govvey, none of which have an online customer-service link or online application instructions other than photos with captions or videos. An Amazon customer-service representative tried to look up contact information but said the only details he could find were in Chinese characters, which he couldn’t decipher.
Online customer reviews for repair kits back up Adkins’s warning that patching successfully can be trickier than it seems. While many reviewers gave high marks for the results they achieved, those who reported low marks sometimes said their countertops wound up looking worse than before. Common complaints: It was too hard to match the color. The epoxy, especially on an edge chip, was too runny to mold. The countertop got scratched when they used sandpaper, which is included in the kits, to make the patch level.
Adkins said he puts a lot of effort into creating patches that almost disappear. About 90% of the quartz countertops he repairs are a slightly off-white shade with gray veining that mimics Calacatta marble, a natural stone. He stocks up on the perfect colorant for patching that. But when he is patching natural stone, which usually has lots of color variation, or man-made materials that sparkle or have chips of different colors, he often uses clear epoxy, which lets the color of the countertop around the chip show through. But no patch is perfect.
Customers often ask if the patch will be visible. His answer? “Yes, especially by you, the homeowner, because you are seeing me do it. But in most cases, someone who walks into the room for the first time will not see the damage.”