Counters Without Cabinets, a Dummy Speaks

How about a pipe shelf, Sal?

Sometimes all one of our staffers needs to nominate an online post for our daily award is a single sentence. Maybe the rest of the content is OK (or at least acceptable), but that one line is enough to trip the bullcrap detector or, as is the case today, cause unending mirth. So without further ado, let's see just what it is that had our staffer ROFL when she read the Sal Marco post "How to Support a Countertop in a Laundry Room" at HomeSteady.com.

The sentence that tickled her fancy shows up in Marco's introduction. Sure, we know that every eHow.com writer was forced to write an introduction and that those introductions are often mere filler, but did Sal really have to insult the intelligence of the average lab rat with verbiage like this:

"An unsupported countertop lacks stability and strength, which can lead to the countertop loosening and falling."

Let's face it, an unsupported countertop isn't a countertop, it's something you find lying on the floor...

While we were at it, we took a look at what Marco wrote. Besides failing to mention the possibility of putting a base cabinet or bathroom vanity under the counter top, Sal fell into the trap of assuming that the material in question is laminate on MDF. Maybe, maybe not... He also fudged his "reference," claiming he got the info from a book. Well, we have that particular book in our library, and the info's not in there; meaning that Sal probably made it up.

His instructions call for gluing "strips of 1-inch-thick wood" to the underside of the counter and mounting it to a wall with "shelf brackets or angle iron L-brackets." Yuck: and this is a guy who claims to have "more than 20 years of experience in the home improvement and building industries"? You would think that someone that experienced wouldn't talk about "1-inch-thick wood" or suggest using "angle iron L-brackets" for a job like this.

Someone with experience probably wouldn't think that you need to use shelf brackets at every stud along the length of the counter, and he'd probably be more helpful discussing the type of screws to use instead of specifying a 1¼" pilot hole...
Marco didn't have anything  to say about other types of countertops, and he also didn't have anything to say about alternative mounting, just the overly simple shelf-bracket approach based on a fake reference. That just added to our glee when it came time to hand out the Dumbass of the Day award...

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