Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Kitchen Reno V - Concrete Countertops

Nephew and I decided on concrete countertops for the kitchen, but neither of us has ever done it before.  He came up with the great idea to practice on the cabinets he built in the barn.  He needed countertops and was going to make them out of plywood, but concrete is even better, and...we do need to practice.  So, concrete countertops in the barn, here we come!

Here are the forms that Nephew built.  He divided this one slab into four sections.  We planned it all out and were going to try a different technique on each section.  We didn't actually follow through on said plan, though, because when we started mixing the concrete, panic ensued and most of our meticulous (or slap dash, as the case may be) planning flew out the barn door.

As an aside, I really am, at heart, a slacker.  I didn't want to practice.  I just wanted to jump right in and pour beautiful concrete right in the middle of the kitchen.  But, I was persuaded by Nephew's logic.  And, I gotta tell ya', it's a good thing.

I've watched the tutorials and have seen that we must caulk the edges with silicone.  So, I diligently caulked.  I love the straight lines.  Don't you?

OK, so I'm pretty sure this was NOT MY JOB.

My job is designer of fun stuff, not builder of equipment.

Tom had bought a little cement mixer to do another project later this year, which he graciously allowed us to use for our own project.  It came in a box and needed assembly.  Well, I thought assembly meant taking it out of the box, putting the drum on the stand and filling it with concrete.

Uh, no.

It was all in pieces.  The above picture shows it half assembled.  And, for some reason, we were doing this in the blazing hot sun.  And no breeze.

The instructions were ridiculous.  It took both of us, with our brains, to decipher these pages.  Yes, it was in English, but not for normal people.

We finally got it together with minimal taking it back apart and reassembling.

Let the concrete pouring begin!

2 comments:

Tina said...

Tom knew what he was doing when he let you borrow it - he didn't have to put it together - ha!

Mosaics said...

That might have been his evil plan. He came over while we were starting to put it together. I'm quite sure that if I had looked sufficiently distressed, he would have taken over and done it for me. Unfortunately, he left while I was still in my confident "can-do" phase.