Breven's Outdoor Kitchen Progress Brick Oven Photos Discuss Breven's Outdoor Kitchen Progress in the Good Background Information forums; Breven, are you planning on sealing your slate tiles? A guy at HD recommended a concrete sealer and I used ...

[SteveP]

Breven, are you planning on sealing your slate tiles? A guy at HD recommended a concrete sealer and I used it on my slate tiles and it worked well at first, but it now seems to be bubbling in spots. Have you found anything that might work?

[Breven]

Steve-

I found a sealer from Dupont, I think I got it a Lowes, and I tried sealing the counter top tiles this winter and it didn't go so well. The weather was way to cold and the sealer ended up freezing. Then it snowed the next day. A week later, when all the snow was gone, I was left with sealer peeling off and all my fresh grout had cracked up and shrunk.

So I really dont know how good that sealer is. I'm going to give it another try though and I'll let you know how it turns out. I was going to seal it yesterday, but the instructions said not to apply in direct sunlight. I'll need to get up real early next weekend and try it then.

[mfiore]

Breven,
Do you nail the slate roofing directly to the cement board, or is there some other underlayment in between?

[Breven]

Mike-
Good question. I've seen slate stone roofing tiles before, and they have a hole in them to nail it to the roof. Before I put this roof on, I called all the roofing companies in a 50 mile radius and no one had a clue what I was talking about (I guess real stone roofing is very uncommon in these parts). Basically, I just used a bunch of thinset mortar, mixed with a liquid latex additive and I just set them in place. We get very little rain, so I wasn't too worried about water seeping through the stone and through the mortar. I sealed the top real well, jsut in case..I think it'll work fine.

[mfiore]

Sounds like it should work just fine. Did you use roofing tiles then, or the same tiles you used for the counters? I never considered that. I'm also having a very difficult time in this area finding affordable roofing slate.

[Breven]

Yeah, I couldn't find any locally. I ended up using the same multi-color slate tiles I used for the counter tops from Home Depot. They're only $1.25 each. The seemed to work really well. I used a lot of mortar, to make sure each tile was seated well on all sides. I'd say this was an easy way to go. I have no experience at all with roofing and I did make one mistake when setting the very first row of tiles. I should have set the top row of brick about 4 inches or so above the roof line, but I only set it an inch above. As I set each row and went higher and higher up the roof I noticed that I was having to use more and more mortar. By the time I got to the peak, the tiles were about 3 inches or so from the roof. If I would have started the first row at a better angle, I would have avoided that. Know what I mean? The only other thing I had to do was quite a bit of grinding. The stone is obviously not flat and smooth, so in order to get the tiles to seat well and even on top of another stone tile, I had to grind some of them down a bit. Especially around the curve. As the tiles came together they formed a bit of a peak...since the next tile straddles the peak I had to flatten each peak out. Time consuming...but the finished product looks great.

[mfiore]

Originally Posted by Breven

the finished product looks great.

I agree, looks great!

[Breven]

Thanks Mike...I can actually see light at the end of the tunnel!

Finished grouting the counters, sealed them up this weekend. Just have some brick under the bar counter to set- and this thing is over. Of course, that will take 3 or 4 weekends to finish...but I see the light!

[SteveP]

Your slate tile roof looks great. The slate tile I got from HD for my countertop is not nearly as colorful as yours. Your overall build is very nice. Good work.

[Breven]

Well, I guess the end is finally here! Finished the last bit of brick...stick a fork in it, this thing is done. Only took 17 months!

Actually, I do have a few small things to take care of, like connecting a gas line to the side burner, coming up with a place to hang all my oven tools, and then there's the little electical post problem. I have some pipes sticking up from the ground in front of the counter top, an electrical connection for the light in my pool. In hindsight, I should have moved it. But since the light is completley sealed from water, and the closest place to move it to would require tunneling under 10 feet of concrete, I decided just to leave it. Now its an eyesore. I think I'll build something around it, to make it look like some sort of support for the counter top. I'll make it removable so I can get to that electrical connection if I need to change out the light. Nothing I need to do right away. I'll just put a barstool in front of it and try to ignore it. Speaking of which, anyone know where you can find cheap bar stools? I need 10 of them and these suckers are expensive!