How to Make Concrete Stepping Stones with GLASS

hi david o'dell here we're doing a little bonus stepping stones along with this patio we're going to be doing i happened to be at goodwill the other day and i ran across these and i got this whole bag of these glass beads for a dollar at the goodwill so i'm gonna throw these in the concrete today [Music] so if you notice we're pumping this in that's because we're doing a lot more concrete on this particular project but if you want to just do these stepping stones as a diy project any uh pre-mixed bag stuff the local hardware supply will work fine all right we got the concrete in here now we just gotta flatten it out a little bit we're just gonna do that with a hand float fiberglass hand float and it's okay if we're a little bit low too really because we're gonna be throwing all these glass beads in there for a little low it's going to come back up a little when we put the glass beads in all right now the fun part was to spread them it's a little wet really you could wait a little longer on this you can see how they're sinking way down just by dropping them we'll just do this one we'll do this one early we'll wait on the next one and go a little bit later because i'm going to lose a lot of glass this is pretty wet right now so a lot of it's dropping down deep never to be seen again i just want the stuff on the top really looking at this process that we're doing gonna take at least four hours minimal in 70 degree weather no sun about you know four hours four to six [Music] this is an hour later after initial lay down we've already put a glass coating on the first stepping stone and this one here we're going to go with just like a lazy river pattern going through it of the glass so i'm going to draw it out first the pattern we're going to try to get let's start here we'll just do a lazy ass start right here just try to maintain that there we go see how we have that little shape there and that's going to be the glass area now the tricky part getting the glass where i want it i have to take my time on this get it just right oops see that almost messed up this is kind of setting them so they don't move around on me all right all the glass is gone tap it in we'll try to get this all the way flush i don't want these to fall out later we're gonna actually bury them and then what we'll do later we'll expose them by rinsing with water and we'll do that probably in about three hours so right now all the creams going over these glass beads the glasses disappear the interesting part is to see when it comes back when we do the rinse all right we're back on it and now it's three hours later and we'll be troweling it one more time and edging it so you notice that the glass beads aren't popping the cream's not really popping off of them as much as they were earlier because it's a little dryer now [Music] once we can get a perfectly smooth finish and you can't see those beads starting to pop see the little rock pockets on top of like if we were to clean this off see there's the glass so what's happening because it's still a little wet to get your final trowel is the rocks the cream is just kind of rolling off the top when you pass a trowel over it so basically it's just too wet edging gets a little easier right now as far as holding its flat level all right we're back on it again four hours later this should be my final pass i'll just edge it trowel it one more time then i'm gonna let it set another hour so we'll be a good five hours total into this but once i do the rants i'll give you another timeline on that and here we go all right how many hours we into it now let's take a look here four four and a half hours let's see if it's ready i'll just put a little water on it start with loosen it up loosen it up with this horsehair broom get it loosened up do another light rinse see where we're at look at that fiber mesh coming up all right that was pretty interesting how that fiber fiber mesh just rolled off the top that's when you know it's actually in there when you can see it so i ended up going with a nylon brush a little bit stiffer because i kind of almost waited too long to rinse this actually i mean i could win about another 15 minutes early but it's better late you know than early because if you go early all these beads will just fall out you'll have a real mess so i had to scrub a little bit harder because i went late but you know the beads are well embedded and they're not coming out once we do all this rinse we'll let it dry overnight we'll come back the next day strip the forms separate them give it a good cleaning and we'll seal them the nice thing about these stepping stones if you're considering doing something like this on your own at home you don't really need a concrete truck and a pump hose and all that you can do it with some typical bag mix you know quick crete any bag mix concrete pre-mix will work just fine all right second day we just uh stripped the forms on this now i'm just going to brush it get any residue off of it it might still be on these glass beads okay we did this pretty quick second day we're going with the sealer um we didn't do the muratic acid wash we didn't neutralize it we skipped all that went straight to the brush now we're gonna go right to the sealer available at home depot roll it around oh wow this is really looking good huh typically you can't really seal this stuff the next day especially a large area so what happens is the water wants to evaporate out of the concrete if you have water trapped in the concrete it gets stuck between the sealer and the surface of the concrete and it turns milky white but in this case since the concrete areas are so small and they can breathe all the way around it we can displace any moisture out the sides that's my hope anyway we'll find out long term but i'm pretty sure we're good here [Music] the sealer does a couple of things really it's not just to make it nice and bright and shiny and beautiful but it's also to preserve the entire surface so i imagine if you did high usage on a surface like this with these beautiful glass marbles they could get dull by wear and scuffing them but if you keep a nice sealer on it it should last forever that's our goal make it last forever every time thanks for watching and have fun you

Channel: Odell Complete Concrete

Views: 646,650

Keywords: odell, odell concrete, odell complete concrete, diy stepping stones, stepping stones, concrete stepping stones, how to make concrete stepping stones, stepping stones diy, concrete, how to make stepping stones, garden stepping stones, stepping stone, diy concrete stepping stones, diy, concrete stepping stone, homemade stepping stones, stepping stones with concrete, how to make stepping stones with concrete, diy concrete, concrete stepping stones diy, garden stepping stone

Id: w2pESkMhVl4

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021