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Concrete Counter Top

Thanks Guys!

larry merlau said:
ok the high dollar question???? would you do it again for the whole kitchen?:huh::huh:
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Probably not for a whole kitchen. :eek:

That would be a lot of work and take quite a bit of time.

Well, not the way I did it. Doing a great big slab for a kitchen would be very heavy. Heck, this was heavy enough for the tiny area. I love the way it turned out but it's not perfect. There are still little pock marks here and there that could have been smoothed out, but I got tired of trying to fill them.

Darren Wright said:
Great job Brent! I'm seeing an outdoor kitchen sometime in my future, a concrete top might just be the way to go. :)
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I think that might be a perfect use for concrete counter.

I would probably think about pouring it in place instead of doing it the way I did. If you could get a nice, smoothly troweled surface, I think the diamond disks would be able to polish it up quite nicely.

If I was to do it again, I'd probably do the first layer a bit wetter to reduce the amount of bubbles on the bottom (which becomes the top when you flip it). If I didn't have to deal with the bubbles it would have been a lot easier.

If you do a melamine mold, and the counter is of any size, make sure you get a bunch of guys to help move it around.
 
It really does have an appearance like some of the man-made counters. We have silestone in our kitchen, and it really does have that kind of a feel to it.

Here's a close up of the surface.

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That came out pretty good for being it your first time. I wish you had asked, (maybe you did but I missed it:() because I could have given you some hints.

My wife used to make concrete sculptures, one of the tricks is to use white concrete so that you can die it of any colour you want. Another is to play with the kind of sand you mix with it. For instance if you use white marble sand with blue concrete you get white point on a blue background when you polish it.

Another tip is to mix it pretty thick and dry so that you actually have to press it down on the mold with a stomper ( don't know if that word exists). Making it light and liquid so it flows doesn't work at all.

You can polish it to a high gloss without much problem, it only takes time.
Here you have two pics of some my wife's sculptures.

How on earth can I make them bigger?
 

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Good advice Toni.

I made the concrete pretty thick and dry, but my biggest mistake was not packing the first layer down good enough to fill the voids. I did fill them in later with a cement slurry, though.

Those sculptures of your wife's look pretty cool. Are they heavy? How did she make the molds for them?
 
Yeah i think he has been holding out on us. She is a member here too now. Come on Toni;)

Hey Brent i like the way he pops up after the slab is thrown to tell you what to do.:rolleyes::D;):rofl:
 
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