Easy Concrete Countertops | Concrete Countertops How To

hey what's going on welcome to a kitchen not my kitchen but a kitchen today i'm going to show you guys how to do concrete countertops we're going to rip off these old wood veneered countertops they don't look that good we're going to replace them with awesome updated concrete countertops and we're going to walk you through the entire process step by step so you can do it in your own home so follow along check out how we do it and please subscribe down below [Music] a huge thanks to our sponsor for this video concrete countertop solutions with their patented z countertop forms so the first thing we had to do was remove these nasty old wood veneered countertops whoever thought wood veneer for a countertop was a good idea i do not like that person all right so we got all the old countertops ripped off so now we're getting ready we're going to put a hardy board half inch hearty board over the entire surface that's what's going to make up the base of our concrete form but before we do that we're going to have to add some additional supports a few places on the cabinets you don't want any huge spans like this that's just hardy board because the cement's pretty heavy so we're gonna put some 2x4 bracing across here and we also have to put some right along the wall here so that we have a lip for the hardy board to rest on there and there so we're going to go ahead and do that right now and then we'll be ready to lay our hardy board the concrete countertops actually going to hang down about an inch over the front of the cabinet so we can hide the screws for our 2x4 braces next you just want to cut the hardie board using a skill saw and a masonry blade you're just going to cut the hardie board to fit over the entire surface of the counter making sure to leave holes for your sink and oven and any other random accoutrements you may or may not have then we attach the hardy board to the countertop with just a few cement board screws all right we've got all the hardy board down on top of our cabinets so now we're actually going to start building our forms now we used half inch hardy board you don't really want to use quarter inch it's a little bit too thin to support the weight of the concrete but now that all of our hardy board is in place we've teamed up with concrete countertop solutions to use their patented z countertop forms in my opinion this is by far the best way to do concrete countertops let me show you how it works so they have these plastic forms that screw on the exterior side of all of your countertop surfaces you just screw them right to the hardy board and this creates the outer edge of your form and the really cool thing is once your concrete's all poured and it's set up these are designed to just snap off leaving the back part of the form up underneath the concrete where you're not even going to see it so there's no melamine forms you have to deal with taking them on taking them off you put this on when you're all done you snap it off and you're good to go so we're going to start attaching our forms around the entire perimeter of the entire countertop surface when you get to corners like this you're going to do some miters we're going to show you that entire process so that's the next step we're going to do that and then i'm going to show you how to do the floating fiberglass mesh which is another really cool component of the entire concrete countertop solutions system so let's do it the forms come in eight foot runs so you just cut them to fit your specific countertop making sure to cut miters wherever there's a corner and cut them flush when they butt up to back walls and things like that again we just attach them to the top of the countertop with a few cement screws making sure everything is nice and tight and then we'll go back with some duct tape and tape all of our seams on the outside of the form just to make sure you know no concrete leaks out and gets our floor all yeah all right so we have all the forms down on the front of our cabinet like i said these are really cool because once you get them in place and you do your pour after it's dry you can just snap these off and you don't see anything so now that we have the front forms down we're going to put the back piece on this is really just a rest to rest our screed on so we can keep everything nice and level and the one other thing we have to do is over here where the stove goes in so instead of using the regular form coming off the edge which creates this overhang here you want to be able to slide the stove in so basically what you want to do is just take a scrap piece of wood this is actually a scrap piece of the backsplash that we pulled off but it's nice and smooth and you're just going to attach that on making sure that it butts flush against your front form and this is going to make a perfectly straight edge on this side of the concrete countertop so that way you can slide your stove right in so we're going to get these pieces on we're going to get our back pieces on and then we're gonna move on to the floating fiberglass mesh check it out along with the front form pieces they also send these back plastic pieces now these are really just a screet rest but they're really handy alright so now we have all of our forms in place we got the front forms on we got the back piece on that's going to rest our screet all along the back walls we also put our pieces in for our stoves those flat pieces i was talking about those will just get unscrewed once the concrete is set up for this job we're doing an over mount just drop-in sink so super easy we just built up a little form around for the sink it's actually going to go this thing goes all the way against the back wall which makes it nice and easy so we're just going to have this little strip of concrete on the front right there now the next thing we're going to do is start laying our spun fiberglass mesh now the problem when you put mesh or rebar or anything in concrete is to get it to sit right at the perfect height you want it floated right in the middle the cool thing about the z countertop system is they have this spun concur this spun fiberglass mesh and then they sell these little clips and you screw these clips down to your hardy board and then your mesh just clips into the clips and it floats it at the perfect level all the way around in your entire countertop so we're gonna hook all these little clips down now get our spun fiberglass mesh in place and then we're pretty much ready to pour at that point their fiberglass mesh is one of the coolest parts of the entire system it's always such a pain to get your rebar or wire suspended at just the right level inside your concrete but with the spun fiberglass mesh you just cut it to fit your counter surface and then using the attached clips you just lock it in place and it's not going to go anywhere you just want to make sure to hold it back from that front edge just a little bit you don't want it sticking out and visible after you do your pour that wouldn't look too good and as i mentioned before you do your pour you want to make sure to tape up all your seams duct tape works great for this just to make sure they're sealed nice and tight and no concrete is going to leak out you can also use clear silicone caulk and any other bigger cracks you just don't want to use any on the inside of your form because it'll show up in your final pour so we're on our way to the big box store right now we got to pick up concrete uh we're gonna be using sand top mix concrete countertop solutions has this awesome fiber additive that we add to the concrete it just gives it a little bit more strength to prevent cracking and stuff like that so we use the sand top mix and then for each bag of concrete we add one box of the fiber additive so i think for this job we're gonna need something like 12 bags of concrete we might need less than that but it's always good to get a few extra bags just in case you can always take them back the last thing you want is to run out of concrete in the middle of your course you definitely don't want that to happen so we're gonna get that and a few other key things you need some buckets to mix in you need a big paddle mixer on a big beefy drill it's not really worth getting a big concrete mixer unless you're doing some crazy huge pour it's really easier just to do it in five gallon buckets and then just bring bucket after bucket in but we'll show you that whole process when we get to it so that's what's next make sure you get sand top concrete mix not just sand that wouldn't be good all right so we are just about ready to pour here we've got all of our forms in place our fiberglass mesh you can see is floated nicely with these awesome little clips so it's all held in place you don't have to worry about it moving around so now we're going to get our concrete mix all dialed in you want a pretty wet mix when you do this so that it flows nicely through all of your fiberglass mesh and we're going to get rocking and rolling here so stay tuned we're going to show you exactly what pouring a concrete countertop looks like to each bag of sand top mix we're adding one box of the z liqui-crete formula from concrete countertop solutions this is an ultra fine acrylic fiber formula that actually increases the strength of the overall concrete and helps prevent cracking and then you mix the whole thing with water the best thing to do is mix up one bucket first and measure out how much water you're going to use once you get your mix just right then you know exactly how much water you're going to need on each additional bucket to make sure you have a good consistent mix across the entire pour of your countertop for us that equaled out to be about seven liters of water but concrete mix is different depending on where you live so just keep adding water until you get a nice cake batter like consistency you want it pretty wet for the pour then i'm sure you could guess this next part you take the concrete into the kitchen and you pour it on the countertops it's a really good idea to have a couple people helping you do the pour that way you can have people outside mixing buckets while you're working inside so you don't find yourself in a situation where you're outside mixing and your countertops already starting to harden up inside that's not a good thing i like to start at one end and just work my way across the countertop pouring one bucket at a time and using a steel trowel to just kind of push the concrete into place then you're going to use a screet resting it on the front form and that back handy plastic piece you're just going to run the screen across the entire countertop making sure you get the entire surface nice and level i'll show you another shot of that here in just a second oh i don't think i mentioned this either but you definitely want to put plastic down on the floor before you do this because you're gonna make a little bit of a mess here's another shot of me screeding the top of the countertop you're just scraping that long straight edge across the countertop filling in any holes that might be there just making sure it's all nice and flat don't worry too much at this point about getting it super smooth we'll get to that in a second it's also very important that as you go you take some time to tap the edge of your form this releases any air bubbles that might be trapped on that front edge and will show up when you pull those forms more shots of me screeding once all your cement is poured and screeded the next step is to begin smoothing out the surface of your countertop for this we're going to first use the magnesium float now you want your magnesium float to be nice and wet and then you're just very gently running it over the top of the countertop smoothing out any bumps or ridges and making sure that there is enough concrete over the entire surface stop the music hold the phone next we're going to use the steel trowel to really smooth the surface of our countertops but in order to get the best finish with the steel trowel you want to let your concrete sit up a little bit and just get a bit harder you're going to know it's ready to use the steel trowel when you can touch your finger to it leaving just the impression of a fingerprint without removing any concrete onto your fingertip sound is another important indicator of when your top is ready to use the steel trowel i'm going to play the clip now and listen very carefully to the sound this is what it should sound like as you're using the steel trowel if you don't hear that dry scratching metallic sound as you run the steel trowel over the surface of the countertops you're probably doing it too early once it's ready to go you want to make sure your steel trowel is nice and wet as you can see i have a spray bottle with me and i keep cleaning my trowel and misting it with the spray bottle this just keeps it from sticking to the countertop surface and pulling up concrete then you want to angle the trowel slightly so that you're really just dragging your back edge of the trowel across the countertop making sure not to dig any of your corners into the surface as you go then very slowly you just want to smooth the entire surface of your countertop until well it's smooth with your steel troweling complete the next thing you want to do is cover your entire countertops with plastic this just slows down the drying process and will ensure that you don't get any hairline cracks across the surface of your countertop and then in 24 to 48 hours we can strip our forms hey okay so it's been about 48 hours since we did our pour as you can see everything's starting to dry up really nice so at this point it is safe to take off our forms so very carefully we're gonna run a putty knife along this edge just to separate the form a little bit and if you have concrete that's kind of hanging over the edge of the form it's good just to take a little bit of a sanding block with like 120 sandpaper and just knock down the crispy cement that's on the edge there that way you don't chip off the edge when you pull your form off so we're going to make sure that the form is all separated a little bit right now then we're just gonna snap these things off and you're gonna see that under this form there's gonna be a beautiful edge all the way around that's just like perfect so that's what we're gonna do this is by far the most satisfying part of the entire process snapping off those forms and it just shows how flippin easy the concrete countertop solutions z-forms are to use can you imagine having to unscrew melamine through this entire process that would be such a pain but as you can see in the video you just separate them from the countertop with a putty knife and they just snap right off leaving a tiny line of plastic up underneath the countertop that you can only see if you get down on your belly and look up like a weirdo with our forms stripped it's time to seal our countertops but we have to wait until they are completely cured before we can do this you can tell they're cured by taping a piece of plastic to the top of the countertop if no moisture collects under the piece of plastic after 24 hours then you are good to go okay so we have stripped our forms everything is looking awesome as you can see where the form was you have like an almost glass-like finish where the form was right up against that concrete because we tapped the edge of the form really well we got out pretty much all of the air bubbles there's just a few little spots and concrete countertop solutions does have a concrete patch if you get a lot of air bubbles you can actually patch those or any imperfections on the top but we really don't need to do that here because we got the edge vibrated so well so we're going to now seal the countertops and what we're going to use is their aquathane product it's um from concrete countertop solutions it's a two-part sealer so you put four parts of a with one part of b we're going to do two coats you can do as many coats as you want we're going to do two coats for now and then maybe in six or eight months we might do another few coats but basically to apply it what you're going to want is just a little nap roller like this works really well you don't want it super thick you don't want it to puddle anywhere a nice thin even coat over the entire surface so we're going to do one coat let it sit until it's not tacky anymore and then we can do our second coat you do want to apply the second coat within like four to eight hours if you wait too long then you can still apply another coat but you have to sand the first coat lightly just so the second coat adheres to the top so we're gonna get this mixed up and we're going to finish everything right now so check it out before applying the sealer to the countertops you want to make sure they are completely dust free i just use a wet rag and keep wiping down the counters until i can run my hand over the dry counter without any dust being visible on my hand then we mix up our sealer according to the directions on the label and we start rolling it on now this isn't like paint you don't have to make sure to go in one direction you can go frontwards backwards sideways most important part is that you get a nice thin even layer over the entire surface now it's going to go on milky white but don't freak out it will become crystal clear as it dries as you can see here our countertop is completely sealed clear and looking absolutely gorgeous this project is finished well there you have it we went from worn out wood veneer to these beautiful concrete countertops in less than a week i hope that you realize that concrete countertops don't have to be intimidating you can have these countertops in your own home by following these simple steps now do me a huge favor and click that subscribe button down below also click that little bell that'll make sure you get notified when i drop new videos just like this and maybe send this video to like a million of your friends if you feel like it

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 4,489,773

Keywords: concrete, concrete countertops, easy concrete countertops, how to make concrete countertops, how to pour concrete countertops, how to, diy, how to make concrete forms, concrete kitchen counters, concrete counters, diy concrete countertops, make your own concrete countertops, cheap kitchen countertops, easy kitchen countertops, inexpensive countertops, cement countertops, step by step concrete countertops, best concrete countertops, best way to do concrete countertops, countertops

Id: llWsYmrnMUo

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020