We describe the use of two semitransparent gold layers of equal thickness as substrates in the interferometric surface forces apparatus. The continuous gold layers were evaporated onto an adhesion layer of chromium on muscovite mica that had been exposed to water vapor plasma to introduce reactive groups on its surface. Multiple beam interferometry was used to measure the thickness of mixed alkanethiol monolayers covalently bound to the gold and the film thickness of homeotropically oriented liquid crystals confined between these monolayers. In 4 ' -n-pentyl-4-cyanobiphenyl, quasi-periodic structural forces with transitions comparable to the length of a liquid crystal dimer were observed at film thicknesses below 13 nm, indicating that confinement-induced smecticlike ordering can occur also between two surfaces with a root-mean-square roughness of less than or equal to1 nm. Similar transitions could also be observed in 4 ' -n-octyl-4cyanobiphenyl.