How to make a Concrete Counter Top in 1 hour!

what is happening everybody my name is Michael and I'm gonna show you the quickest and easiest way to make a concrete countertop let's make something cool [Music] no doubt by now you've watched at least 100 concrete countertop how-to videos and not one of them is the same but they all seem to have at least really frustrating things in common a lot of work they also you're a player three to seven they pure time for the tops and they make the project look like one big huge pain in the ass I'm gonna make you two promises after you're done watching this video I promise you that this is going to be the quickest and easiest method of making a concrete countertop that you have ever seen and I promise that you'll never have to watch another concrete countertop video ever again so this is where it all begins this is just a simple mold made out of a simple box but this is where we can make the concrete do whatever we want it to do and you can make this any shape and size that you want you can make this a square shape a rectangle L shape or a half a heart shape I'm not saying that I've done that before but this is America and I can do it a lot but I'll make a separate video on all the different mold making techniques but for now we're gonna stick with this two foot by four foot rectangle and you're gonna see how this is gonna make a statement all on its own and I'll show you some cool stuff along the way in making concrete countertops there seems to be about three basic methods the first method cast-in-place cast-in-place is probably the most traditional way of making a concrete countertop and involves making a form directly over the cabinets pouring in place and then traveling the top smooth the great part about this is that you're pouring right where you're going to be installing it so the installation is already done on the other hand you're gonna have a big fat mess on your hands and you have to rely heavily on your troweling skills the second method is GF RC glass fiber reinforced concrete it's light it's strong it looks great but this requires special order materials and tools and it's just not practical for the everyday DIY er the third method is inverted caste this is a way that you and I are going to do this this is probably the easiest and fastest way to make a concrete countertop it's quick and easy there's minimal mess and there's no troweling skills involved because the mould does all the work for us and yes you'll have to install a big heavy slab of concrete but you have about over 500 friends on Facebook I'm sure that two or three of them are gonna help you install this bad boy so what makes my method it's so much quicker and so much easier than all the other methods out there it's mainly to do with the material I used so let's go pick up our concrete for our top you know what that means depo run let's make like a transformer and roll out this is the start of the show right here we're gonna use rapid set mortar mix rapid set is expensive they can do so you can't get it anywhere else this guy will go for my half inch thick to six inches thick it is rock solid in one hour one hour later it's 25 psi 20 days later it's 6500 psi so I'm not even going to bother putting any metal reinforcement rabbits uh cement is a CSA basinet so it is three times stronger than any portland-based cement for our project we're hanging two bags oh and before I forget also while you're here you got two baggies of flow control don't forget you're gonna want one bag of flow control per bag of mortar mix if you get all right don't worry I'll explain later [Music] to construct our mold we're gonna be using a material called melamine mal amine is a particle board with a smooth plastic finish our countertop is an inch and a half thick so I'm going to rip the sides at two and a quarter to accommodate the thickness of the 3/4 inch male amina since the construction of this mold is very simple I'm not going to spend too much time going over the assembly but I do want to share some tips all right so you guys can use whatever kind of screws you want or whatever method you want to get this box together but what I highly recommend are these facts multi-purpose construction screws specifically the waiver heads these guys have got a nice flat head bottom arm so that way you're not gonna have to do any kind of pre drilling and you're not gonna split the wood as you screw these guys together it's gonna make like way simpler you're gonna get this box together way quicker [Music] we have a box assembled the only thing left to do now is to seal the corners with a we're going to use 100% silicone to seal the corners of the mold after running a bead of caulk we're gonna spray a foam window cleaner on top to prevent the silicone from sticking to any surfaces we don't want it to when we run our finger down the bead to make it smooth this will make cleanup a breeze that's it guys we're gonna let the silicone set up for about 24 hours and then we're gonna pour this bad boy I don't know about you but I'm excited about this make sure the mold is flat and level before you pour all right so we're gonna prep our mold and we're gonna do that by spraying it down with wd-40 so you're gonna make a great release agent so that way our concrete countertops going to pull away from my form with no fuss or muss [Music] you just want to get a really good coating on this but we don't want any staining puddles and that's pretty much it we're ready to pour at this point but I want to take it one step further I'm going to add a design by simply cutting a stencil out of a sheet of paper I'm then gonna sprinkle dry sanded tile grout over the stencil using a foam cup [Music] I'm going to continue to sprinkle the tile grout on the mold to mimic veins for a natural stone look [Music] it's a good idea to stage your workstation next to your mold it'll save you time and a lot of energy make sure to use cold clean potable water all right this is where I want to stop and make sure that everything I need I've got my concrete got my bucket scraper I've got my flow control got a trowel on standby got my drill on hand clean water and make sure that you have a bucket with water for cleaning your tools in once we get this past this point and we start pouring our concrete it's go time guys we're gonna start by adding five quarts of water to our mixing bucket [Music] then go ahead and dump an entire bag of mortar max into the mixing bucket I strongly suggest mixing one bag at a time especially if you're doing this alone then switch your drill to a low-speed and mix [Music] I cannot stress to you the importance of doing the Captain Morgan stance we're going to start off with a peanut butter consistency but for our projects we want a more pourable consistency to accomplish this we're gonna add one packet of rapidset flow control flow control is a plasticizer that will give us an instant pancake batter consistency without losing any string or set time [Music] mystics dollars I've ever spent pocket scraper all right at this point we want to take a nice straight board and just run it across the top business the technical term for this is a screen but it's just a board all right at this point we're just gonna let it sit once this guy starts to kick and we're gonna know because it's gonna start to get light spots then we're gonna want to keep it wet keep it saturated we're gonna start water turning for one hour and after that we can go ahead and flip this bad boy over and we're done we need to work the bubbles up so that we don't have any voids in our concrete we're going to accomplish this by tapping the sides with a hammer or vibrating the sides with a sander and you only have to do this for a few minutes [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] what do you guys think took us about like what 30 minutes to make the mold about five minutes to mix and pour one hour later we were able to flip this guy over and now it's ready for service you guys remember how I didn't put any kind of reinforcement check this out I [Music] could tell you how much weights on here right now but that is none of your business now sure we've got some pitting going on here from the grout but we want that we're going for a natural stone look in the cool part about a project like this any mistake you make just adds to the character Bob Ross said it best there are no mistakes just a few little accidents thanks Bob Ross [Music] so at this point there you have it it's all done right now we could seal it with a clear coat this is where we would put some sort of topical stain if we wanted to you could also aligned it smooth if you want to but you're gonna find that using this method you're really not going to need to because we have this nice silky smooth finish on the top we have nice rounded corners and you're not sharp you know what I want to take it just one more step further we're gonna give this guy a live edge simply using a mason hammer [Music] all I'm doing is going about an eighth of an inch or so away from the edge I'm taking the pointy edge of the hammer and I'm just giving it a light tap and then a little harder if needs be and then just do that all the way around flip the countertop over and do the other side go slow at first go easy but for God's sakes please use your safety glasses and your patience [Music] instant live it for a nice cool industrial look spice it up a little bit [Music] so we could easily install this on a cabinet in a kitchen or a bathroom but I want to do something just a little bit different with this guy my cousin has got this wonky coffee table and I want to make him a really cool coffee table let's replace that what are we gonna make this coffee table out of I'm glad you asked what you guys don't have a big mountain of pallets just hanging out behind your shed let's do something with that [Music] all right we are gonna glue this top on with rabid sets flexible construction adhesive this stuff sticks to just about anything you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] guys thank you so much for watching my video truth be told this is my very first video so let me know if you liked it bye hammering on that like button and if you want to see some more videos like advanced mold making or just getting back to basics with tools I'll hit that subscribe button and I would love to take you on some more adventures with me and see where this thing goes let's make some cool stuff and I'll see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Michael Builds

Views: 2,521,597

Rating: 4.9378228 out of 5

Keywords: concrete counter top, concrete, counter top, concrete countertop, countertop, tutorial, how to, Rapid Set, CTS Cement, rapid set mortar mix, mortar mix, rapid set flexible construction adhesive, flexible construction adhesive, inverted mold, upside down mold, melamine, melamine mold, gfrc, cast in place, pallets, reclaimed lumber, coffee table, concrete coffee table, cool concrete, concrete decor, concrete design, advanced concrete, concrete countertops, countertops

Id: T7mYB6x68DY

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 10 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/jaydubya123]

Wow, only one comment. I found this video for the first time in YouTube while searching for ideas for a countertop at our campground. Can't wait to try it out with a few small modifications. I bet if you posted it in r/DIY you would get more discussion going on

[u/melekalikimaka321]

This is an immense time saver! Very practical and seems easy enough to use. 10/10