If you’ve been in construction for more than a day, you know that walls are never straight and corners are never square. Sometimes walls are downright curvy. How can you deal with this when you’re using straight template stock? You want your concrete countertop to fit properly!
One method would be to cut into the template stock to fit the curvature of the wall. However, this requires cutting a little, fitting to the wall, shaving off a little more, and repeating many times.
A much simpler way is to build up the template edges to fit the wall. Simply run the template stock straight along the wall, which will expose the gaps where the wall curves in. Then attach small “fingers” of template stock to fit the curves. The more curved the wall, the thinner the fingers should be in order to accurately record the curvature.
In the photo below, the corner is far from 90 degrees. The wall is straight up to about 2 feet from the corner, then curves out almost an inch. Since this countertop was to have no backsplash, the countertop had to fit flush to the wall. Even if this countertop had a backsplash, the extreme curvature of the wall would have required making the countertop slab at least a little curved.
Notice in the photo that the edge is marked “No B.S. Fit to wall.” (No backsplash.) There are 3 fingers starting where the wall curvature starts. Attaching these fingers to the template took only a few seconds.
This simple technique will result in more accurate templates and save a lot of time.
