However, in colder regions or cooler seasons, you can allow for four days of curing. After leaving your concrete for adequate curing, you have to create profiles before sealing your concrete.
Profiling your concrete guarantees the sealer builds up a decent mechanical bond with the surface. Before sealing the concrete, it is vital to have a matte finish to prevent any reflection. Profiling also eliminates surficial material or foreign substances that would meddle with shaping a decent bond. Nevertheless, there are some popular profiling techniques, namely, etching and honing. Cleaning should follow right after profiling your concrete. It would be best to clean the concrete to take care of any scratches or flaws formed due to profiling.
So, you can use a soft cushion foam along with clear water to wipe the concrete surface. Finally, your concrete should be arid after applying the sealer. Dry concrete allows the sealer to have a firm hold of the concrete. In contrast, moist or wet concrete will hinder the cure, causing ineffective sealing of the concrete countertop. The smooth polish offers you the smoothest sheen any polisher technique can offer.
However, to get this sheen, hone your countertop lightly with your diamond pad and hand polisher. They are also famous for their excellent absorbent feature for dust and small particle dirt. This type of concrete polish is the easiest to achieve and is suitable to hold stains and colors better than smooth polish.
So, to get this surface, you need to expose the underlying sand in the concrete mix. However, this requires a level of expertise, as you have to watch out not to expose the aggregate layer.
It is the most attractive concrete finish type and most sought after. You can make the mold out of melamine. You will use the previously made template for tracing and cutting the base of the mold and marking any openings for the sink and faucets.
After cutting the walls of the mold which reflect the depth of the countertop , screw the base and walls tightly together. To create the necessary openings for the sink and faucets, you will need pre-shaped knockouts which you can buy or make yourself , which will be glued or screwed to the base of the mold.
Finally, to make the mold watertight, seal all seams with silicone caulk. You'll now have the option to show off your artistry by embedding decorative objects into the countertop, like stones, coins, fossils, shells; basically any object with a flat surface can be inlaid into the countertop, adding unique character to the final piece. After you've selected the decorative inserts, it's best to glue them to the base of the mold to ensure they will stay in place during vibration and eventually show up in the final countertop piece.
In order to prevent the concrete from cracking, the countertop needs to be reinforced by using rebar and wire mesh. Bend the rebar into a frame lining the inside of the mold and then fill in the frame with a grid of wire mesh, creating something that looks like a cage. Lower the cage into the mold and hang it with the help of screws attached to the outer sides of the mold. After you have built and reinforcing the mold, the next step consists in preparing the concrete mix.
Different concrete manufacturers will have different recipes for making the mix. A typical recipe would include the following ingredients: bagged concrete a combination of cement, sand and aggregates , water reducer for workability, polypropylene fibers for strength, varying amounts of pigment for color, and a minimum amount of water for hydrating the cement. To simplify the mix design process for the do-it-yourselfer, several manufacturers such as www.
In most cases, all you need to add to these products are water and bagged concrete from your local home improvement store; however make sure to always follow the manufacturer's instructions for best results! The most important thing to keep in mind when mixing concrete is that the least amount of water used in relation to the cement produces the least amount of shrinkage and yields the strongest, most durable concrete.
The ideal concrete mix should have the consistency of runny oatmeal. Concrete can be mixed in just about anything: buckets, a wheelbarrow, or a washtub. However, there is really no substitute for a good mixer; it is the best way to thoroughly combine all of your ingredients. Choosing the mix with the higher PSI will provide better defense against cracks and limit crack repair down the line.
Unlike many building materials, concrete tolerates climate-controlled environments as well as some temperature and humidity fluctuations. Imagine using Countertop Mix to create a beautiful outdoor countertop to serve as a sturdy work surface for all your potting and transplanting needs! To learn more, check out this instructional potting counter video from the pros at Quikrete. Perhaps the most popular way to use a concrete countertop outdoors, however, is as a bar for an outdoor kitchen.
In this second video tutorial from Quikrete, see exactly how easy it is to design a bar from scratch and incorporate the concrete slab work surface. It has the color tinting, support fibers, and water reducers to make the concrete perfect for countertops. I highly recommend this for first timers. You'll want to make sure to have gloves and masks while you're mixing concrete since it is very dusty and messy.
It's also a good idea to have 3 people during the pour so that one person can be cleaning up the mixer and tools while the others are pouring it. We followed the instructions that came with the kits to mix the concrete and then started rolling wheelbarrows of concrete into the garage.
At first we gently put in the concrete with our hands so that we wouldn't disturb the crushed glass. Once the glass was covered, we used a shovel to load it in. Only fill the mold half full before you stop to vibrate the concrete. You must vibrate the concrete if you want to avoid air bubbles that will create voids in the countertop.
There are commercial concrete vibrators, but I found that rapping rubber mallets along the bottom and all around the mold seemed to work best. It really wears you out using the mallets, but you'll soon see air bubbles popping out along the surface so you'll know it's working. Cheng also recommends using an orbital sander with no sandpaper on it to vibrate the concrete. I tried this and it worked ok around the sides of the mold, but didn't do much along the bottom.
Now go ahead and fill the mold with the rest of the concrete making sure to add a bit more than the mold can hold. Use a straight piece of lumber or melamine that is long enough to span the mold to screed the concrete. Start on one side and push the screed back and forth along the sides till you go all the way across the mold for a level finish. Make sure you fill any holes where the concrete might have been low and re-screed it.
Go ahead and start vibrating the concrete again. Make sure you've vibrated it as well as possible. It took me about 10 minutes of swinging the mallets before I felt that it was vibrated properly. Now you wait The ideal curing conditions are in a humid, shaded area between 70 and 90 degrees fahrenheit.
I chose to have it cure in my garage since it stays in those conditions through the summer. It's recommended that if the temperature is below 50 degrees you get some sort of heating for proper curing. It's also not good to cure in the sun because it will dry out too quickly and be more likely to crack. I waited 4 days before moving onto the next step. Can you imagine Mr. P's anticipation? There's a window of time that is ideal to take advantage of if you're going to be grinding and polishing your countertop.
After 4 days, the concrete is stiff enough to break the mold. Concrete reaches full strength after 28 days.
I made sure that all my grinding and polishing was done within that 6 day period which made my job easier. After 4 days of curing, I started unscrewing all of the screws in the mold. Make sure that you get all of them and it should go fairly smoothly. Don't put any pressure on the green concrete by prying against it, as you will risk chipping or cracking. Once you get all the sides off, you'll need at least one other person to lift it off the bottom of the mold.
It should pop off the bottom fairly easily. Then prop it up on it's edge. I then laid down strip of the styrofoam and laid the countertop right side up on top of it. This props the countertop off the bottom so you can get your fingers under it and it also makes it easier to grind the edges. If you want your countertop to be a solid color, you can skip the grinding process and move right on to polishing.
Both processes require using diamond coated grinding pads with a wet grinder, but there's less time involved in polishing. I wanted to expose the aggregate and glass in my countertop, so I chose to grind first. This is an extremely wet process. You will be soaked from head to toe and, as we all know, water and power tools don't mix. There's also the option of using air tools to avoid the problem of electricity which I thought was a perfect and cheaper solution.
So I bought this air wet grinder. It seems like a great little tool, but I never got a chance to use it because I failed to realize it requires 8 SCFMs to operate. My little pancake compressor wouldn't even get close. The good news is that for anyone who does have an air compressor that can push 8 SCFMs, I'll sell you my air grinder So I went the pro route. I bought a Hellcat Wet Grinder. Not only did this make a rather time intensive job much easier, but it's double insulated from water and has an additional GFCI on it for added protection.
Of course, you'll need a set of diamond pads, which I found very cheap here. The only pads that I didn't use were the grit and buffing pads, so I found this to be a really good value.
They will also last for multiple projects, so you may want to talk a buddy who also wants new countertops into splitting the cost of the grinder and pads. I tried that with Mr. P but he didn't fall for it. Curse him for his evil genius-ness! P Note: "Beelzabubba didn't raise no fool. Water mixed with ground concrete dust flies everywhere, so I chose to move the countertops outside. You'll want to wear rubber gloves and rubber boots to give added protection from shock.
P Note: "Some people consider this a fashion forward look. Not many, but some do. I slowly moved it forward and backward, then from side to side. Almost as soon as you grind, you'll start seeing aggregate being exposed. The first pad is the most difficult because your grinding down the most with it. Continue grinding until you have the desired aggregate exposed. One thing that is important is to keep your grinder as flat as possible on the surface, especially with the rougher grit pads.
You can get some deep marks in the countertop if you don't keep it level.
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