Concrete countertops (exposed aggregate)

all right guys so i'm working on finishing up my house so that i can sell it and this kitchen in particular these countertops and cabinets need to be finished up and it's one of the bigger projects that i need to tackle to get this house on the market so i'm installing a cast in place concrete countertop and it will sit on underlayment half inch durac or hardy board is what you could typically use this is my first concrete countertop but i did a lot of research to get me to this point it's rather late in the day right now so i'm going to concentrate on just getting this island done [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] so now i'm going to form all these countertops with a nice bullnose edge this piece right here is a quarter bullnose they have all different kinds of designs that you can put on here and what these do is go on here and then you snap the front off so it gives it the profile of the quarter bullnose and then right here it's like a thin point see and then you just snap this whole thing off from the front you snap it that way and then it comes off and this is underneath of everything so you can't see this this stays in here i was actually pretty surprised about how durable these are they're like an eighth inch thick they're a lot like thicker than i thought they would be they're very strong and so the idea behind this is that you just put it right on the edge here you screw it down to the duroc so what we need to do is cut these on a compound miter saw and i need to form these 45 degree corners here which are pretty small so it's going to be a little bit tedious to do that so the first thing i'm going to do is lay these on here and just get a mark when they butt up because see you got this little spot on the bottom that kind of kicks out and then on the corners we just want to mark where that is [Music] now i have the intersecting points there that i can measure to oh [Music] 2016 [Music] good can you hold me on uh one inch or you can hold me on two inches to make it easier good yep [Music] uh [Music] [Music] uh [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] to reinforce this countertop i'm going to be using this fiber mesh and this is actually made out of like a fiberglass it's not like plastic or anything this is specifically meant for this all this stuff i'm using came from concrete countertop solutions and i will leave a link in the description for all the products that i'm using so this is really easy you just roll this out cut it with some scissors or a utility knife and then i'm going to be putting some spacers to keep it in the middle of the slab [Music] you want to make sure you got at least three quarters of an inch between the edge of the fiber and the edge of the form you don't want to get too close otherwise that fiber might stick out so these are called z-clips and all they do is just hold this mesh right in the middle of the slab [Music] bye [Music] um [Music] so to get these miters to go together what i'm going to do is duct tape them with some gorilla tape you need something pretty strong to hold them together you see they got these gaps and once you put the tape on it closes that up [Music] so oh all right so this is all ready to pour some concrete so in my concrete mix i'm going to be putting some charcoal pigments in there i'm going to be adding one of these for each bag of concrete that i'm putting in and this mix that i'm using here is specially made for countertops this is an 80 pound bag and i'm just going to be mixing it in this bin right here instead of a bucket because i think it's going to be pretty thick when i'm done i'm going to mix this color in with the water i did eight and a half pints so [Music] okay so i don't know what's going on here i don't know if this mix is bad or something but i added what i was supposed to and then i added like another quart of water and it's still just powder i'm not happy with this mix at all i think i'm going to return all these bags this stuff was like 26 dollars a bag and i found a bunch of clumps in it that are already dry and there's a lot more in there so i'm not going to use this mix i'm going to go to the store and use some rabbits at mortar mix okay so i went to my local orange box store and i got this rapid set mortar mix i've used this a lot actually and i've used the cement all version even more and i've always been really happy with the way that both of these turned out on a whole bunch of different projects i've done with them it's a little bit expensive it's more expensive than that that's 26 dollars for 80 pounds this is 17 for 55 pounds but you have to add some additives to this to make it work better so what i got is a bag of flow control i'm gonna put two bags of flow control in this this is basically just a plasticizer and i also got a bag of set control this is a retarder and basically what it does is it slows it down because this stuff sets up in like 15 minutes and it's just it sets up way too quick so i'm gonna add two bags of this two bags of this to a 55 pound bag of this i don't know what that comes out to but i know it's a little bit more than the other stuff but i'm just gonna return that other stuff especially with these clumps in there there's there's just no reason for that this is actually a lot lighter of a concrete so i'm thinking that the color is gonna actually stand out more so i should probably use less of it so i'm gonna have to play around with it but i got to keep it consistent so i'm going to start out by measuring in this cup right here and i'm going to put half of one of these containers for each bag that i put in which is only 55 pounds and this rapid set mortar mix has a compressive strength of 6 500 pounds and i think it's reached within like 24 hours or something like that something crazy quick like that so it's definitely gonna do for what we need we only need about 5000 psi so with the plasticizer i can set this to about a seven or eight slump with no problem and still keep that 6500 psi you can add up to four of the plasticizers but i'm just going to use two for now we'll see how that goes so this is 10 ounces of color so i'm just gonna put five ounces in this bag they say to add it to the water before you put it in there but i found that it just stays on the bottom of the water so i think what i'm gonna do is actually just put the water in the bucket put about three quarters of this bag in and then put this in and put two of each of these in mix it all around and then add the other quarter of the bag after that so i'm gonna start out with four quarts of water you can add up to five quarts and still have 6 500 psi so start out with four we can always add more but we can't take it away [Music] [Music] so [Music] i don't know if that's really dark enough for what i want so i'm just going to add the whole thing so that's pretty soupy i'm thinking that's a good consistency right there they say a max of five quarts per bag i put four in so we're definitely under the limit and i probably will give it more than 6 500 when it's done [Music] so so [Laughter] wow you did it i don't know where it is so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes that's pretty glass smooth right there foreign uh i have put this support here for this overhang just so it doesn't sit all by itself with the duroc just something simple i put together in two minutes what do you think it came out pretty good what do you think you don't know i started the sanded over here but it's kind of time consuming so i'm just gonna go ahead and start forming up for the rest of my kitchen here that's what it's going to look like that's the color i'm pretty happy with the color you like the color yeah i'm going to get going [Music] [Music] [Music] three so foreign [Music] so i got all these pieces dry fit now just want to make sure everything worked and then i can put my silicone on you don't have to do this but i put a few extra supports on both of the sides of the sink as well as the back side here too i put some extra one buys in here this is just a temporary 2x4 and then on the back side i have a temporary 1x5 just to hold it while it's curing over here i put another 2x4 because that's kind of a big span there what's this if you take this and run the flange along here then you know where that line is you know where it intersects the point of intersection is where you measure to on these flat sides here you could just end it or you could put this little mitered return on here [Music] i love our [Music] [Music] that was loud that's very dusty [Music] to get this under mount sink formed up in here they give you this little strip and it has an adhesive on it and basically you just put it on the side of the sink like this and you make sure the height is good just use a level going across to the back side level bring it right up to the level all the way around the sink [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] it was [Music] so hello so [Music] ah [Music] [Music] so back i'm just going to hit this one more time with the steel trowel in a little while and then i'm going to call this good i'm not going to go as crazy as i did with the island i could probably leave it just like this because i'm just going to sand it all down anyways uh [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] box [Music] [Music] beautiful [Music] uh uh [Music] [Music] [Music] i'm going to do the same sequence for sanding and finishing as i did pouring these i'm going to do the island first just to make sure everything is the way i want it before i go and do the bigger section over there so i got this wet grinder and it feeds water into a part in the middle there and it spins the water around inside these pads these pads are like specifically made for this and it like gets the water into these grooves and spins them around this shroud keeps the water from somewhat getting out and this is protected with the gfci here is some pads that i got with it on the machine right now is 200 grit and it goes down to 50 and then 100 and then 200 and then 400 and then 800 and then 15 and 3000 these are diamond discs and they have like a composite material that has like really fine pieces of diamond in it so they should last for a few counter tops this grinder was a little over 200 and then it was like 70 dollars for the discs i'm gonna be wearing some insulated gloves because when you're wet grinding you can get shocked even with the gfci even with double gfcis you can get shocked so to try to reduce the shocking you can wear these gloves so for the water it came with a hose spigot connection here so all i did was just tap into the bottom of my sink i converted it from the 3 8 compression fitting to a garden hose fitting that way i can just plug it in right there and i don't have to drape a hose from outside so i'm going to start grinding away at this island i'm going to start off with 50 grit level it out the best i can with 50 and then just work my way up with these different discs if you were to try to do this without wet sanding it it would be an absolute nightmare in five minutes you wouldn't even be able to see the lights overhead that's how dusty it would be i have this shroud for a grinder and you hook it up so it hooks up to a vacuum cleaner and that reduces some of the dust but it definitely doesn't do enough if you were working in a house that nobody was living in you might be able to get away with something like this but it still makes a lot of dust this island is going to need a lot more work than the rest of the countertops what i figured out when i was doing this when i was screening this off i was i think i was going too fast and what it was doing is pulling the stuff with it so along the outsides as i was screeding it it was leaving it like an eighth inch low so because of that i wasn't able to get it super flat like i wanted on that area over there i was working a lot slower with the screed and i also kind of overfilled it later on i think at the beginning it was too wet to screed so i waited a little while to screed it and i think that really helped along with going slower with the screed too so these counters shouldn't need that much work i don't even know if i need to hit it with 50. but what i did is install my faucet and my stove just temporarily because right now it's like a disaster if you're if you're laying up your kitchen for a week and you have nothing to use it's kind of a disaster you know i have like all my stuff over here and it's like not ideal for a long time so i just wanted to be able to cook and clean dishes and stuff and then as soon as we get done with this we'll switch over there we'll pull the stove back out we'll pull the faucet out and then when we're all done i can put my dishwasher back i can put the faucet back and put the stove back but for right now it's kind of annoying not having those the idea behind the finish that i'm doing is going to be exposed aggregate so i'm gonna grind everything down until i can see the the little rocks like that there's like little white pebbles in there and then i'm gonna put a base coat of epoxy as like a primer sealer and then i'll put a real thick coat on top of that so so i got this all sanded down with 50 grit the best i think i can get it and i still have these little spots right here these are from the bubbles that were coming out before i didn't have that problem with that countertop but this one i definitely had some bubbles coming up and i tried to take care of most of them but i didn't get them all and that's the result of it so i'm going to mix up a slurry and use that to coat everything i'm probably going to have to do it a few times it's going to be a little bit tricky because i got to put this color in it so i got to figure out the formula and try to get as close as i can at the end of the day if it's a little bit off i don't think it's gonna matter that much because it's only little tiny spots here and there now the stuff that i'm using does have some bigger rocks in it up to about almost a quarter of an inch there's not many but i'm thinking i can just put it on here and then just squeegee it off and it'll leave the the portland part of it and then it'll fill in these little spots even if i got to do it like two or three times this stuff dries in 15 minutes so i can just keep doing it and then i'll give it another sand down with the 50 and then i can move forward and do the hundred i would say that's pretty close now i didn't add any plasticizer or any retarder in it so i guess i got to work quick probably all i need to do right there [Music] i got this all sanded down with 50 and then i did 100 and then i did 200 and i left it at that i could have gone a lot higher on the grit but i don't see any point because it's just gonna have a thick coat of epoxy on it so i'm gonna put my first coat of primer on it first it's like a primer sealer and you gotta put it on real thin and then i'll do my second coat which is the flood coat it's kind of hard to pick up on camera but you can see all the little stones in there i think it'll look neat when it's done but we'll see so so so the first thing i'm going to do when i start shaping this is get this little tiny ledge out right here it's like a 16th of an inch so i'll just blend that in around the corner and i also need to do some shaping here around the sink and i'll just keep with the 50 until i'm totally done shaping things and then i'll move up from there with the sandpaper [Laughter] so [Laughter] [Laughter] i got that drain closed i don't want to i'll put that down the drain wash all that afterwards just makes this a lot easier get rid of all this excess water i brought this up to 200 grit i'm pretty happy with the way this looks this is so much better than the island the whole thing's a little bit more brown than i thought but i'm already getting used to it it kind of matches the floor too cabinets are a little bit lighter [Music] so do uh so so so look how super glossy that is not that it matters because i'm gonna dull it up but it does look kind of neat it's just not really my style but it's still pretty neat uh [Music] the last thing i want to do here is experiment with the finish on here so i need some wax on here but i don't really know what to get i just went to the store and got this it's food safe that's what i'm looking for i don't know if this stuff is like thick enough but this is what it looks like after i put one coat on it says to apply several coats so i don't want a glossy finish that over there is all glossy this i started sanding here but this is all like it was before i don't like that look though i mean it's kind of neat in in some senses but it's it's just not really my style i usually like about a matte finish satin is kind of okay so if you guys know a good finish to put on here let me know i'm gonna just try on this island to use this stuff and see how it turns out oh so well that's kind of the look i'm looking for i wish it was a little bit more consistent but if i put on a few coats maybe that'll change that let me know what you guys think about a good product to use on epoxy to get a matte finish i know there's some epoxy that you can just put on this and it will automatically be matte finish but it was like sold out when i tried to find it that would be the easy way to do it just to put another thin layer of epoxy on the top not even have to sand anything so that's why i kind of left that out because i want to see what i'm going to do i may have to actually take this off i may have to sand that down again just to get this off because i don't really know it's for wood so i don't know if it's really the right stuff it looks like a good shine but you can still see some of the scratches in it i'm thinking it's not thick enough or it's just not the right stuff but i'm going to do another video about this kitchen finishing up the cabinets i'm going to put some upper doors on these and some drawers i'm missing some some stuff here and for the upper doors i'm going to do like a frosted glass i was almost thinking maybe like an epoxy for the glass and then sand it down to like a matte finish almost like a frosted glass that way i can put these led lights inside of each one of these but they don't have to be super clean because they're not like clear like glass would be i thought it'd be cool to have like frosted glass on each one of these uppers and this one i gotta redo that but i made all these cabinets out of finished grade plywood and this is spalted maple which you don't really see a lot of spalted maple all these colors i didn't even put any finish on that that's just raw right now look it's got like burls in it and stuff that's all part of the wood right there and all these panels are solid look at the look at the design in there all these panels are quarter inch that's not plywood that's panels that i milled up out of spalted maple and it was actually from the neighbor the neighbor right next door had a tree fall down and it was spalted maple and so i used that to build my kitchen with so whoever buys this should know that because it's kind of a neat little feature i got a bunch of panels left that i can use so i'm going to use them around this island and all the ends of all the different cabinets here and then i also have a beam up here that i'm going to use it on too so in the next video i'm going to be fixing all this up and making this 100 and i'll get the countertop wrapped up too and then that way you guys can see everything all at once the whole kitchen the way it's gonna be sold and i'm gonna dress it up pretty nice i'm gonna put a backsplash on and these drawer faces have three quarter inch solid spalted maple and it's all milled up i didn't buy anything except for the plywood this undermount sink is really nice this is the place that i worried about the most when i started doing research on the concrete countertops because i always wondered how do you get a nice finish to go around for an undermount sink because an undermount sink is like a must drop in sinks unless they come out like here they're like out of style so you definitely want under mount and you know it worked pretty well i got to still do some work because it's a little bit rough i didn't really sand it down yet but it works really good it's really solid in these spots too there's definitely no breaking that i actually got up here and was jumping up and down before and it didn't break you can see a little bit more depth with this high gloss over here i think i'm going to lose some of that depth and the clarity once i put the matte finish on but i'm just not into this kind of look it's just it's tacky i don't know how to describe it it's like from the 80s that's the way i think of it i mean it looks cool on camera but i like the matte finish matte finish makes it look more comfortable even this is a little too shiny i'm going to do more research on this finish here and see if there's a better product that i can use and if you guys know of any let me know in the comments

Channel: Jesse Muller

Views: 63,610

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Id: jdgyAG_L5IE

Length: 69min 11sec (4151 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 26 2022