Kitchen Reno XII, Finished Concrete Countertop

We finished our concrete countertop.  I think it's pretty great for two rank amateurs.  Internet wisdom told us that it's not a good idea to do a cast in place countertop if one has no experience with concrete.  We took the risk and it was worth it...not perfect, but still great.

We loosely followed the instructions of the smiling Buddy Rhodes, who is apparently the concrete countertop guru of the internet.  I say "loosely followed" because we did not use his concrete material.  His mix is different than the Quikrete product we used and Buddy's mix was waaaay drier than ours.  Ours was a little too wet, but it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference in the finished product.  If you want to do one of your own, I recommend watching all of Buddy's tutorials.

The countertop would have been just as great if I'd not marbled it, and I was torn about the decision, so I polled some friends and family.  The feedback I got was about 50/50 for and against the marbling.  In the end, I decided to do it just because I wanted to.  To the homeowner who may be reading this, this is the price of having me redesign your kitchen.  Faux finishing is fun and sometimes I need to do something just for fun.

If you want to try something like this, here's how I did it.  After the concrete was dry (in our case, three days after we poured), and after we sanded it very lightly, but before the sealer was applied (because, obviously, if you put a sealer on, it will repel stains rather than accept them), I used a concrete stain called SmartColor , in black, and I painted it on with a feather.  Yes, a feather is way better than a paint brush for this application.  SmartColor is a water based stain that comes in a four ounce bottle.  It's pretty thick and dark, so I diluted it with water so that I could get varying shades of gray.  After I saw what color the countertops were going to turn out to be - more of a tan than a gray - I had a little buyer's remorse and wished I had gotten a brown for the marbling.  But, I didn't want to wait (typical), so I made do with the black.

Concrete does not accept stain evenly.  I learned that when I acid stained our barn apartment floor.  That's why concrete looks so natural and stone-like when you stain it and it's beautiful that way.  But, that worked against me somewhat on the marbling.  So, be prepared for the concrete to sometimes do it's own thing while you're applying your stain.  I think our slab was particularly cantankerous because we didn't know what we were doing and our surface, although very smooth, was not uniformly sanded, or...something.  I think it had something to do with some spots have more sand on the surface and some spots having more "cream" (watch Buddy Rhodes if you want to know about concrete cream).

And, that is what contributed to our main issue...

So, when I say "not perfect", the issue is this...the concrete does not have an even sheen.

Since I wanted a food safe finish, I chose to use Buddy Rhodes' sealer and beeswax finish.  I put two coats of sealant, which was a liquid that I just sprayed on and then wiped up the excess.  It's very easy to apply and it protects the concrete from stains, but it has no sheen.  After it dries, you can't tell anything is on it.  He has another sealer, to be applied over the first one, that is supposed to give the concrete a satin sheen.  I didn't buy that one mainly because it is expensive and I didn't see a need for it.  Instead, I went with the wax.  It's like a puck of wax that you just rub over the surface, then buff.  

As you can see in the above picture where the light is reflecting, the concrete looks spotty, and that is because some areas shined up nicely and some remained dull.  I think a couple of more coats of wax will make it uniformly shiny, but that will have to be a project for another day because the most important thing is to get this kitchen finished and functional.

So, it's done!  Except for a couple of small items, I've done all I can do and the rest is up to Nephew.  All that remains is the trim work, installing the sink and dishwasher and electricity in the island.  It could all be done by this weekend.  Or not.

If you want to follow along with the whole kitchen remodel, go far, far back in time to here.

Oh, and as a post script, I did add extra fine glitter (a clear glitter and a silver glitter) to the wet cement.  You can see it in person, but not in the pictures.  I thought it might be sanded off in the final sanding, but we got enough down in the cement so that the sanding revealed the glitter underneath the surface. 

Kitchen Reno XI, Building Forms

When I was contemplating putting concrete countertops in the kitchen and casting them in place (in the kitchen, right on the cabinets), one of the things that had me stumped was...how does one cover up whatever is going to be used as a base for the form?  So, just in case someone else has that same question, I thought I'd explain what we did.

First of all, there are some very good reasons for not casting the concrete in place and many people prefer to pour them in a form outside or in the garage or on the porch.  If you pour them somewhere besides on top of your cabinets, you cast them upside-down. That means you can use a sheet of melamine on the bottom and the sides so that when you take them out of the forms and turn them over, you have a smooth-as-glass countertop.  You don't have to worry about smoothing the bottom of the slab, which won't show after it's installed, so you just pour, screed, and leave it to cure.  It also cuts down on the amount of sanding or slurrying.  And, pouring and finishing concrete is messy.  It's great if you can keep the mess out of the house.

But, if you do it that way, you have to plan your project backwards and upside down.  That's fine if you have just a simple slab with no cutouts, but we had to notch ours on one end to fit against a column and we also had a sink cutout.  And, the biggie...somehow, you've got to get that big ol' slab of concrete back in the house.  Our slab is 10 feet by 4 feet and weighs approximately 800 pounds.  We couldn't very well carry it into the house with a tractor.  According to other tutorials I've seen and read, many people make two or more slabs, then bring them in and put them side by side, but that means there are seams in the countertop.  I wanted one continuous expanse of concrete with no seams.

One more benefit to casting in place is that you end up using less concrete because the bottom of the form becomes part of the thickness.

So, when you cast in place, the bottom of the form, whether you use plywood or concrete board, becomes a permanent part of your countertop.  If you build your form in a simple box style like you would if you were casting it upside down, then when you take the sides of the form off, you would have a 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch strip of plywood (or concrete board showing).  Unsightly!

It takes a bit of forethought to build the forms for cast in place so that the base of the form doesn't show.

Our countertop looks like a two inch thick slab, but we actually only poured the concrete one and half inches thick.  The only part of the concrete that is two inches is the lip around the edge that hides the plywood.

Can you see that line that goes through the middle of the concrete edge in the above picture?  That is there because of the way we poured the concrete.  I don't know why it happens that way, but it came out that way consistently in all of our tests because we poured half the concrete, then laid the rebar on top of that, then poured the rest of the concrete in.  Quikrete instructions say to fill your form starting at one end and working your way towards the other end, filling it to the top.  This is probably why.  But if you do it that way, you'll have to put your reinforcement mesh or rebar in the form before you start pouring, which means you'll have to put some effort into suspending it so it won't just lay on the bottom.  That line doesn't bother me at all, but for those who want to avoid that, this is me telling you how you can.

So, here's a cutaway of the form.  We used 1/2 plywood as the base.  As a side note, 3/4 inch is stronger and we had a bit of a problem with the 1/2 inch flexing because of our overhang.  See how we dealt with that problem here.  To achieve a standard 1 1/2 inch countertop overhang or lip, the plywood base needs to overhang the cabinets by a half an inch to have room to screw a two inch strip of plywood to the underside.  And, since we were pouring a 1 1/2 inch thick slab, the outer strip (that is standing on it's end) needed to be two inches wide.  It is widely recommended that melamine be used for the strips along the side, but we used a PVC product because it could be bought in strips long enough so that we didn't have to have a seam along the 10 foot edge.  This product does have it's downside, though.  It is not as strong as a melamine coated plywood and we had to be careful that it did not flex.

Here it is from a different angle.  The concrete pours into that channel all around the edges and creates a lip that hides the plywood underneath, so that when the forms (the two narrow strips) are taken off after the concrete hardens, all you see is a concrete edge.  If you look at it from underneath, you'll see 1/2 inch of plywood and an inch of concrete.

The PVC product is some kind of trim.  You want to make sure you put the smooth side in or else you'll have those ridges in your finished countertop edge, which is not particularly attractive.

Caulking the corners of the forms fairly thickly will give this nice rounded corner. 

Kitchen Reno VIII, Countertop Update

We've taken the forms off of our second test slab and it's much better.  To see the detail, you'll have to double click on images.

The edges with the melamine are very smooth.  I wish we could get our top that smooth without sanding it.  There are air bubbles which make pock marks.  I don't have a problem with that because I like the irregularity of concrete.  But, if we decide it will look even better without the pock marks, we can use a slurry method to fill them.

The "white" concrete mix is not what I expected.  It's not possible to achieve a true white because of the sand necessary to make the concrete mix, so I wasn't expecting white.  I was actually expecting just a lighter shade of the normal concrete gray color.  Instead, it is more of a creamy color and a lot of the sand in the mix shows with just a light hand sanding.  I'm sure it will still look great, but it throws the vision I had in my mind off just a little.

The veining is still there, but it is very light.  The feather made grooves in the cement that we don't want.  I'll try another method of painting on the marbling after we've properly sanded the concrete.  Unfortunately, it has been very difficult to find the sanding/polishing pads that we need.  We'll probably have to order them off the internet and maybe even buy a new sander.  We did not "tent" our slab with plastic to cure as was recommended by all tutorials.  I don't know if that has hurt our finished product, but we will be tenting the kitchen concrete as directed.

This is the set of cabinets in the barn that we've been working with.  There's another set just like them to the left of this one.  We'll eventually put a countertop on those, but right now we have to concentrate on getting the cabinets in the kitchen so that we can create the countertop in there.

We're getting close.  Nephew has been installing cabinets today.

Yay!  I'm so excited!

Kitchen Reno VI, First Test Pour

After we put the cement mixer together, we were ready to mix the concrete.

The first thing we learned was (1) put the water into the mixer FIRST.  Then add the concrete in batches, letting each one mix thoroughly before adding the next batch.  We're using Quikrete Countertop Mix in white.  All we have to do is add water (no sand or rocks or additives), which is great, but still, Nephew wouldn't have to be aiding the mixer with a shovel if we had done it right.  Also, you can avoid panic and urgent cries of, "Add water! Add water!"

It's just all around better to do it that way.

Cement dust is bad for you.  Don't breathe it.  It puffs up out of the mixer while you add it.

Here's the first pour.  We thought it was a pretty good consistency.  The instructions say to add one gallon of water per 80 pound bag of concrete mix.  It actually took more than that to get it pourable.

After the first pour, we were too panicked and horrified to take pictures.  Even if I had thought about it, I had wet cement coated gloves on and couldn't pick up my camera.  So, you'll just have to imagine what it might have looked like.  

We poured a thin layer, then laid rebar on that, then poured more over it.  I patted it down and pushed it into the corners and the little channel across the front and sides that will form the lip of the countertop. 

OK, so I thought I might be able to make the concrete look like carrera marble.  My thought was that I could sprinkle extra fine glitter onto the surface and then kind of trowel it in.  Then I could use the liquid concrete tint sort of as a paint.  I bought charcoal because when I paint with grey or black, I can get all kinds of shades of grey.  My reasoning was that I was painting on a white background and that the tint would just kind of ooze into the surface and when it was troweled, it would streak and look like marble veining.

I was so, so wrong.

The tint was so strong and I used waaay too much of it.  I wish I had pictures of our horrified faces as Nephew troweled over it and it turned into big ugly black streaks.  I ran for a rag to press on the surface to soak up as much of the tint as I could, but it was too late.

Behold....ugly.

OK, so we know what not to do.

As part of our test process, we had to test which material would be best for the form edges.  The prevailing wisdom is to use melamine for the best results.  It's supposed to produce a smoother surface and release easier when it's time to take the forms off.  For this side, we used plywood.

As you can see, it's not so good.  It's all bumpy.  Not good for a kitchen island.  We determined that on our next test we will (1) use a little more water to make the mix flow a little better, (2) manually and with a trowel press each layer of concrete down really good.  In the picture, you can see that there is a nice smooth edge at the bottom of the slab.  That's the layer that we poured, troweled, then laid the rebar on.  We didn't really press down that much on the top layer, I guess. And, (3) vibrate the countertop to shake the air bubbles out.  We had planned to do that on this one, but were so freaked out that we completely forgot until it was all over with.  

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!