Mrs W has promised our eldest son a larger bedroom. That means a smaller office for us… and lots of clearing out plus a week’s DIY planned for October…

Last weekend’s trip to IKEA in preparation also taught me that a) they don’t make the Pragel counters I currently use in the office any more; and b) the Linnmon table tops I’m using in the new office need to be cut down to fit (because they are 2000x600mm and the room is 2590mm wide – so the tops will be 1cm too long to fit in an L-shape!).

My last attempt at cutting laminate tops was pretty awful. Thank goodness the cut edge sits in the corner, against the wall, hidden by the computer monitor on top of it because the chipping is so bad. And I used masking tape along the cut on the finished side – as well as cutting from the under side.

Mrs W did say I could buy new tools… and the guy in IKEA was clearly trying to convince her I needed do do some Makita shopping but, to be perfectly honest, my JCB-branded-Chinese-import-bought-from-a-DIY-shed-circa-2002 only gets used once a year and the biggest job was our decking… circa 2002…

It turns out the problem was the blade I used. Lots of reading about cutting laminate worktops told me to get a fine blade… but how do you define a “fine” blade circular saw? One post I read said 24-30 teeth. So I bought one on Amazon that had 100 teeth – that should do the job, right?

Well, a test cut today suggests so – look at the picture here and you can see my old ragged (20 teeth) cut on the left, and the new one on the right (100 teeth). Still not perfect but passable…

On that basis, I’ll risk it. And if it all goes horribly wrong, its only £25 for another counter top… or I could always chip a centimetre out of the plasterboard wall instead!

Further reading

Cutting Pragel countertops (via The Wayback Machine, as IKEA’s lawyers appear to have forced closure of the original Ikeafans website).