DIY Concrete Countertops

So I am just going to get right into it. Especially since I know quite a few of you have been looking forward to this post. I dedicate this to my brother-in-law & my sister, Jon & Laurie. Hope this gives you the confidence to try this out yourselves. :) And thanks to our friends Justin & Alison for inspiring us to make our own.

Supplies:

Rented cement mixer (I think it was $30/day...totally worth it!!)

9 bags of concrete (sand/topping mix)

Huge bucket full of water

Smaller pouring buckets

3 bottles of liquid cement color (dye)

Melamine board/forms(built into the size/shape of your countertop)

Caulking

Tuck tape (no not duck tape..tuck tape)

A cement trowel

Rebar & steel grate (cut to length to fit inside the forms)

Cement sealant

Staining cloths

Stir stick (nothing fancy..could even be a strong branch)

Face mask & gloves

(Have a place where you can dump your excess cement)

Step 1.

Wipe clean your melamine surface. Make sure there's no dirt or debris on it. This is actually a pic of before Joel had completed the forms. Remember to caulk all the edges in your form and have them dry before you begin.

Step 2.

Set up the concrete mixer. Plug it in. (Joel is saying "don't take my picture"..hehe)

Step 3.

Bite your nails...b/c you are about to embark on an adventure.

Step 4.

Have your concrete bags out and ready to go by the mixer.

Step 5.

Put on your gloves. Start measuring out the water you need (transferring from the huge bucket to the smaller one). Joel just followed the instructions on the bag.

We decided to add a dye to ours because we wanted it to have a slightly darker look. Just kind of wing it. I think it's supposed to be 1 bottle to 1 bag, where we did 1 bottle to 4 bags. I can't remember the water to cement ratio that we used but let's pretend it was a gallon of water to one bag. Then we had to keep in mind the amount of water we were already putting in when we mixed the dye.

Step 6.

Cut open the bag of cement and dump into the mixer.

Step 7.

Pour in your water & dye mixture. Use your stir stick to make sure it doesn't get stuck to the sides. Turn on the machine and watch it till it gets to a good consistency. Basically a really wet mud. Not too dry and not too runny. Sort of like making mud pies. Don't you love my professional terminology? :) Also this might be a good time to put on your face mask. You see the dust flying around?

Step 8.

Fill up a bucket with a bunch of the gooey cement mix and dump it onto your melamine board. Take your trowel and working relatively fast, move it and press it into all the corners evenly. Joel and I kept shaking the table to try to get the cement to settle in nicely. Although it probably would have been a good idea to have some sort of vibration to properly shake it down.

Step 9.

Fill the first board up about 2/3 full. Then put in the steel grate. Dump more mixture and continue troweling and filling till you reach the top. Skreet off any excess.

Step 10.

Our concrete countertops were made in 2 separate pieces. So at this point we kept mixing more cement as we needed it and started filling the next board/form. That's why this is really a 2 person job. Someone to keep mixing more concrete, and someone to trowel it down. This second piece was different because it had a huge empty square in it for the sink. So we used rebar to reinforce the top and bottom sections that would surround the sink. And we also used the steel grate throughout. To make the holes for the faucet and soap dispenser, Joel cut up small round pieces. He then taped them all together with Tack tape so that the edges would be smooth and so that the cement wouldn't adhere to it. He also surrounded the edges of the sink cutout with the Tuck tape. Look at the huge mess! :)

That last picture you'll notice too that it looks more watery. That's because the sand had started settling towards the bottom and the water stayed on top. Which is totally normal. Little bubbles will start to pop as the air rises to the top. Keep shaking or vibrating the table to release as many bubbles as possible till they are mostly gone.

This is us at the end of our project. It only took us about 2 hours (during Jake's nap time). Then it was time to wait.

Step 11.

Depending on the weather it might set faster but it was practically freezing here. So we waited a full week before taking the melamine forms off. And then another week before Joel & Justin turned the counter tops right side up.

Step 12.

A few days later Joel mixed up a very small batch of concrete and filled in all the little holes on the top. He just troweled on a very thin coating. We decided not to fill in the sides. We wanted a more vintage, lived in feel.

Don't worry too much about matching the color precisely. It was nice to see a slight difference in coloration in the holes. Made it look more like stone that way.

Step 13.

We let it set for about another week or so, till it was good and hard. Then Joel polished the countertops with some diamond polishing pads that he ordered online. He used 400 grit, 800 grit, 1500 grit, & then 3000 grit.

Step 14.

Then we called up a bunch of our friends and finally had the countertops moved in. Thanks to Brad, Justin, Chris and Joel's dad, Carl for lending us your time and muscles!! (Notice how dark the countertop looked when we first brought it in)

Notice the unfinished edges. We like them that way.

We waited a bit for the countertops to fully dry out inside the house. We actually didnt realize how much water was still left inside. That's why they were so dark, which I liked. As they completely dried, they got way lighter in color which I wasn't loving as much. But the clear coat saved the day for me. It went back to being pretty dark. So keep in mind that the "clear coat" will deepen the color quite a bit.

Step 15.

Rub on 2 separate coats of cement sealant. We used a product called Pentra-Guard. And a little bit of that stuff went a long way. It was so easy to apply. We just used staining cloths to buff it in.

Here's the finished product. What do you think?

We are now finally starting on the island countertop this weekend and I hope to document some of those pics as well. We are doing it with white concrete so I'm excited to see how it turns out. Let me know if you have any questions. I'll do my best to answer them. Hope this helps you out in some way. Happy concrete mixing!

 

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