Rusty Taco

Last month I had the fun task of creating and installing a custom countertop for Rusty Taco’s new Minneapolis location.  The Rusty Taco is a delicious taco hot spot serving $2.50 hand made tacos and margaritas – yumm.  This new location opened just weeks ago and is located at 522 E. Hennepin Ave, Mpls.

With a garage theme as a guide, I created this swirling metallic silver and black countertop.  By using iCoat’s Metal Illusion product, I was able to create a stunning, unique, and durable countertop for all of those tacos to be served up on.

How did you do that you say?

Well let’s start at the beginning to see what’s under there.  The great guys at Cabinets by Dan fashioned a wood top for us made out of a special water resistant wood.  The finish we’ve created is just 1/8″ thick yet tough as nails.  It can go right over most surfaces but in this case, it was a new countertop.  Here is what the top looked like to start:

My friend Terri was helping me on this project and you can see her slaving away while I’m taking some feature photos for you guys.  Terri is also in the faux finishing field and creates some great finishes that you can check out here: Addy’s Room.

After some prep work we applied iCoat’s concrete mix to create the decorative front edge as well as a nice base for our finished product.  Next came the black primer.  This will show through on the decorative front edge of the countertop that will later become one of the cool features of this countertop.

After the primer, the fun began!  We poured the metallic silver epoxy and added the interesting pattern on the top to really bring out the garage theme and the unique metallic features of the top.  I’m sure the photos of the epoxy pour would be fun to see but we only have about 20 minutes to pour and to create all of the details so we needed all hands on deck!

Being reflective, the variation in details is naturally hard to photograph.  Nothing beats seeing it in person, but here are a couple photos to give you an idea of how it turned out!

We topped it off with a coating that guards against any scratches – because you never know when a margarita will need to slide down the countertop!

The finished countertop turned out great!  It is fun to have my work featured in a restaurant where it will get more exposure and perhaps some admirers.  If you do happen to visit, look for my business card display to grab one of my cards.  You’d better also save room for a taco, I highly recommend the Fried Chicken Taco (or 2 or 3 …)!