How to Build a Concrete Fire Table | A to Z

in this video today we are going to show you guys how to make a fire table that's right this is outdoor dining with a heated feature for the wintertime it only takes a couple of days to whip together it seats 10 it's coveted friendly cheers okay so our fire pit design is actually designed to be really quite simple we have created a hole by not installing tile we have our line installed first for the gas so we aren't going to ever need a propane tank it's going to be hooked up directly to the propane tanks that supply our furnace in this area and then when we're done we're going to put this led stone facade on outside we're using this in three different areas of the patio area so it's like a design element and to tie together with the cedar barrel hot tub and the cedar porch so this ought to work really well all we're going to do is install the first course very much like a retaining wall and this is really the thing we have to get the first course incredibly level if it's not level none of this is going to work me lucky all right let's see how this one works out now so the cool thing here is the stone that we're using is uh four by tens and the tile that we're using is 24 inch actual so we can lay all this out and put all this together and have a the odd gap on the each side will stagger those gaps and it allows me to install all of this base for this table which is going to be seven feet long okay so i've got a six foot base with a seven foot table designed for seating for three people on each side with the fire pit right down the middle it's a pretty simple layout and if you mix the right materials in the design process you save yourself a ton of work i don't have to cut all the blocks i don't have a quick cut out here today it won't be necessary just me with my mallet and your maddie and matt and the sun beautiful day i'm working i'm not just sitting here matt does all my physical work for me so i don't die and that's important now just like with the retaining wall we're going to glue all of these together and that'll make this really awesome four season kind of environment okay now look how perfect this is fitting i'm absolutely amazing myself sometimes maddie life is just that good so when you're out buying your stone if you buy actual 24-inch stone and you buy four by ten brick this is like a no-brainer right it's guaranteed to work this is where experience pays lots of videos on youtube with guys that make fire pits you've never worked with the materials they're using before and those are great for learning what not to do but if you're looking for a tutorial how to build one and it's going to work out perfect the first time you're in the right place keep them coming just taking names here oh you want to hand them oh wow i'm waiting for it i might as well eh ah once you get the first layer nice and level just got a double stack now we're going to just double stack and then we're going to change the location of this block to the other side and then we're going to alternate our joint structure a little bit that way we have some overlap and everything's going to get glued and tied together we won't have any um vertical places that can actually separate all right matt let's rock i wanna rock all right so it's just like my father used to say that boy's a couple bricks short of a full load obviously i'm going to the store to grab a few more they're in stock it doesn't matter and because we're doing a facade only here on the outside it don't i don't care if they come in pink it's going to grab a few more stones finish my structure glue it together then we're installing two of these bad boys we're going to be making a custom concrete countertop and don't worry it's not like the first one i did a few years ago we've perfected the arch since then and i'm going to show you how to cast it so that this drops in place and makes a quick connect to the gas line coming up here one two think about it gonna be some sexy and you can do this yourself it's not that hard now what makes this whole system simple is the fact that we've built our base it doesn't have to be perfect just try to keep it as flush as you can here's our facade stone they make it in outside corners all you got to remember is when you're sticking it on a corner alternate your joint and then the next row up along on the other side it's really not that difficult we're going to make the same cement that we use for the patio here which is a kerabond with keralastic additive so it's a non-modified cement and we modify it on site okay so we have an adhesive property that does really well in four season climate now i'm just gonna spray the sucker down make sure she's good and wet now we're ready to install the stone so just to give you an idea this is one of the tools that i forgot i'm not gonna throw that under the bus on this one i left this in the pail yesterday and it was covered in the cement so now it's completely dried i want you to check out the flexibility in this product it's on a steel blade it's not breaking off you ever seen a cement with that kind of flexibility that's why we're doing it okay kara bond with kara elastic has this kind of extreme temperature expansion contraction flexibility and holds its bond this stuff is money in the bank so just a couple quick notes things to think about while you're working outside your patio is going to have a slope your fire table shouldn't so double check look around for the low corner and start your build there and i'm going to suggest a quick little cheat so you don't have to cut every single stone in the fireplace go ahead and get a box of wedges okay these are available at the home depot this leveling tile system just the wedges what we're going to do we're going to use these wedges in varying degrees to level out our stone as it comes along so that hopefully if we get lucky we won't have to do any cuts but if we do we got our trusty wet saw here ready to roll if we need it when we get there now if you're looking at this and you're going well that's a lot of pails there's a method to the madness here one pail i have here marked with my fluid line because it's one gallon of this mixture which is the cara cara elastic with every half bag of the caraband so i have two pails set aside where i i split the bag into two pails evenly i've got a another pail that's my water my my fluid level for the kero elastic and then i put the carol elastic in this pail and then i put the dry goods in here and i try to keep them separate and honestly this stuff is so brutal to work with it's just so amazing performance wise but brutal to work with you're gonna go through a few pills especially if you're doing this over a couple days but i just wanted to show you what the products were that we're using in case you're using this video as a how-to demonstration really incredibly important to use the right product now if you're not in a four season climate check with a company local to you you might be able to get away with not using such an extreme measure each one of these uh five gallon drums is 200 bucks and so if you can avoid that expense living in the south then i would say try but for me there's just no way around it i'm trying to get a miami look in ottawa climate and if you want that you got to pay for it and now we'll let it sit for 10 minutes and we mix it again do not skip this step it is way too soupy right now it needs some time to set up and after all the material in here is activated and it thickens up then it'll be beautiful to work with whew oh our 10 minutes are up look how thick that's getting it's like lava in here oh yeah now we'll mix this up real quick and then we'll get started [Applause] we're just going to take our trowel put it on like we're purging and then we'll travel it in in a second i'm just using the cardboard to control the extra material warning this is going to make a mess all right and i'm using a 3 8 by quarter inch trowel it's a good size for any lead stone the idea here is to try to get enough material on here and step it down so you can do a few rows in the corner and then build across we've got our little thingamajiggers i'm going to start a little bit rough and loose here with it i'm going to stick these in as i pull out the cardboard i want to go start nice and tall here all right this is our low end that's it not much to it eh [Music] okay and then we'll alternate alongside there alongside here okay nice go with a short piece yeah then we'll go with a short outside corner i know it's almost ridiculous how easy this looks in i'm not getting very good bond here if you don't get a good grab just do the back of the dial okay and of course the most important thing is getting good bond so whatever that takes whatever that looks like here i'm gonna do half and half yeah smarty pants you can see the back of this stone though this is from mci it's like pebbled it's not smooth okay so as long as there's enough material or make contact we'll just show you what we got that's all the contact i'm getting so sometimes i can just tell by the way i set it in if i'm making contact if not i'll just back butter the tile experience will tell you this okay you don't have to do everyone but if you're running into issues by all means add a little cement this product is not going to fail if you use more instead of less but it could fail if you don't use enough now i have seen a lot of videos on how to make countertops i even done a video on how to make a countertop that one was not as successful as i would have liked as far as the outcome but at the time the client wanted a countertop that was food safe and at that time that was the only thing on the market as far as material combination that would subdue that we're not doing a food safe countertop today so we get to be a little bit more finessed and sexy we're going to make the mold right here and then we're going to take it off the mold and invert it and put it on the fire pit bring the gas lines to it i just wanted to go over the materials that we're using in this situation because it's going to be a combination of some other different videos you might have seen i've designed this process to be very user friendly for you guys okay so i'm not using materials that you can't get at the local box store everything i'm using here i picked up at home depot yesterday morning except for the fireplace inserts those are going to be available on amazon that's where i bought mine i'll put that link in the description below but this is a really easy thing to do the fireplace inserts came with just a few days everything else is available off the shelf so if you're looking to do a project like this we'll make it as easy as possible for you to be successful you're going to need some black silicone and the reason you want black is because you want to be able to see the contrast between the silicone and the melamine that you're making your mold on so get a color don't just get clear or white it'll drive you crazy you're gonna need a caulking gun to use that you're gonna need a glue gun all right so pick this glue gun up it's not an expensive tool i think it was like 25 or 30 bucks you're gonna need some good glue sticks okay if you get the sticks that are designed for the gun same brand it makes your life easy all right and you're going to want to get this little tool here this is a caulking applicator and it has a rounded edge and it'll help because later on when i show you this will become real valuable there's a lot of different sheets and hacks that other people are using but if you just buy this then you have the tool for life and anytime you're doing caulking work it'll give you a really nice edge now i'm going to save the reveal of all of these really cool features to a little bit later in the video but i will tell you this i'm doing a seven foot counter top with two fire features right down the middle so i'm gonna have a six feet of fire and i'm gonna have glass protectors in front of the fire features so that people can sit at the counter with the fire going and have dinner and have a glass of wine and not run the risk of reaching over and putting your hand into the flame all right now everything i bought off the shelf at home depot and i'm going to show you how to assemble it so that it makes your life simple here we go let's just get started okay so step one is we're going to be building this countertop to the same thickness as the insert that will enable us all kinds of flexibility with our design and if you can check that out it's a two inch thick no big surprise right so we're gonna make our countertop two inches thick makes it everything really simple so what we're going to use is we're going to use a sheet of melamine as our base which will be officially the top of the counter and then we're going to use the second sheet of melamine to cut the material that we need to create our form okay so we're going to go with two inches as a rule so what i'm going to do is i'm going to use the melamine on the bottom as my my cut off area and i'm just taking the second sheet to create a straight edge what i'm going to do is just kind of do like a reverse table saw working with large material like this it's really difficult to use a table saw so use your skill saw or your circular saw and you can create a straight edge guide with piece of material so you can cut straight all right and all you got to do is measure off from the inside of the blade to the outside of the table that'll be running against the other material now that is exactly inch and a half okay so i need inch and a half for that space plus two inches of material so i'm going to set this back at three and a half inches on both ends there we go clamp them together okay now make sure i'm not going to be cutting into anything all we do here is make sure that the table is right up against the other material okay release the guard and then we'll just drive it down the side [Applause] it's kind of what i call a poor man's track saw the only time you really need a track saw for per say on a job site is if you're doing really specific detailed cuts like that is perfectly good loving it i'm going to cut the second one exactly the same set this up at three and a half inches and then clamp it on very important that the entire perimeter of the mold that we're working with is set the same height because then we can screed the cement later to make a nice finish okay let's do another run [Music] so my design calls for a 44 inch wide table the bottom sheet now that i've ripped off those six inches is exactly 44. so i'm going to just take a couple of pieces off this edge here so i can finish my mold set this up again same thing and a half right now if you're watching this video and you've got a cute little glue gun and you have little white sticks for it be careful it's not the same thing this is not a craft gun this is designed for construction we use this for quite a few things here we go now it's set up and it's getting melted we use glue gun on construction sites for a few things attaching porcelain fixtures to a wall and then we silicone it one of them is for electric heat mats on concrete floors you can actually put a drop of glue and then set the tracks for the wires to run in with the glue gun or use the glue gun on the wire itself if you need to and then of course in construction like this this is perfect it's for getting things attached quick in a hurry so in this situation i'm going to use a few drops of the glue to hold this in place so that it sits in the right spot while i throw a few brad nails in it now the whole process of creating the form is three things there's glue a couple brad nails and then the silicone that goes on the interior i'll show you that in a second but just so you know you're not relying solely on the glue so don't make one huge long strip because by the time you get to the other end it'll have dried at the beginning okay so just a few quick drips set it back on the stand and get this thing in place you'll have just a couple of seconds to work with it get it to the edge nice and flush yeah okay well that is going to be the size of the table now because it ain't moving all right here we go now we'll do the all four sides because we're doing one large perimeter table i'm just going to get all four pieces on and then we'll talk about how to lay out and measure all the rest of the interior components of this here we go now hot glue is a little messy and it is a little stringy as you can tell okay so make sure you clean it all off when you're done now one of the reasons you can't use anything else other than plywood will leave it'll leave a texture of the wood on it it also absorbs the water from the concrete and so what melamine is it's a semi-non-porous material okay it comes in a sheet good the reason we're using this is because when we silicone all the joints the concrete will stay wet while it's curing we're not going to pull all the moisture up because it's a portland cement mix we're using and if you let it dry too fast it's actually quite weak so allowing it to stay wet while it's curing is the key here so we really want to make sure that we're protecting all the area where the concrete is getting poured that we're not pulling all the water back out which is why melamine is awesome also when it's all done the concrete will lift right off the smooth surface real easily and because it's so smooth it doesn't leave any of its own texture behind it's a win-win-win all right so here are the components of the fire table we have two of these bad boys okay and the idea is that will be your fire pit that'll look pretty we're gonna pour the concrete now i picked up these glass pieces it's part of a rail system that they're selling at the home depot here in canada anyway i don't know if it's in the united states but other companies are making these things so look around if you can't find it basically it's designed to be i have a top and bottom rail it's safety glass okay and it's just a couple inches longer than the pit that i'm using so i'm going to set it up where i can install one of these on each side of each fire pit on the table all right now warning just for fun i popped outside i tried to cut this on my wet saw to see if it would work i did that for you you can watch that real quick right here nope yeah that didn't work at all so when you're configuring and you're thinking you're through your process because i mean not everybody's gonna do exactly what i'm doing here remember you can't cut safety glass i don't care how hard you try they can only make it to size okay so like when you go to a glass store to get safety glass for any reason every piece that you buy is actually custom made so this is a great way to get around that by using something that's already custom made that's close in size 32 inch fire pit 36 inch glass all right and then i'm going to need a 36 inch aluminum u-channel that i can set into the countertop i'm going to cut that on the saw right now and then we'll assemble all this and lay it out we'll see if we like what we see okay so so the glass itself is 36 and three quarters we're going to cut just a hair longer than that so we don't have any issues okay now this aluminum channel is a half inch channel and the glass is 7 16. so this should be a perfect fit we'll know when we're all finished like i said i'm just designing this out of my head i haven't actually built this before oh and any basic saw will cut aluminum without any difficulty and not destroy the blade so nowhere is there and it requires power okay which i stole for my hot glue gun that's two and of course we need four 36 and three quarters right well at least i have my marker and my knife on me now [Music] okay safety squint's activated okay so what we're going to do real quick is we're just going to confirm that our glass fits this track before we get too overly excited all right so that works good a little bit of wiggle room as i said but it might be necessary my hunch is that under all the weight of that cement because it's going to be installed at the table it might want to move just a bit yeah either way i'm sure we'll be fine so i'm going to just mark a center point here i'm going to use a laser level to help put all this together uh it's going to be 22 and 3 8 is our center mark and we'll measure both sides okay now for all of you who are watching this video and haven't seen a lot of our content telling you right now this is one of my favorite tools this is what takes you from a diy-er to a pro and in a lot of cases you can embarrass the pros if you use a laser level to work with now because we're doing something rather complex we're going to want a couple other marks here let's go with interior measurement i'm 95 and a half just a little bit off the four foot mark is my center so i'm actually 47 okay i'm going to mark my center for that and then i can have my fire pits equal distance away we're going to just visualize how this is going to look and then we'll get it all in perfect location all right yeah i'm pretty cool with that okay so we're gonna go with a four and a half inches off center for both of those and the way that we're going to make the location is really simple i've got my laser line i've got my center i've marked these edges i'm just going to hold this up and that screw is right in the center move this until the laser level's right on that screw perfect square there we are now that is absolutely gorgeous okay now we're not actually making the hole in the table that big we're going to make the hole in the table about this big we'll go to the middle of the flange okay so it's a lot easier for us to set this in place but just by tracing this out it'll give me a point of reference when i'm setting my insulation that i'm going to use the rigid insulation i'm going to cut and install that onto the under the table here because it's also 2 inches thick and it will keep the concrete from filling up those holes while we're pouring all right so that's done we can get rid of these the only thing left for us to do is set up the glass 32 and a half inches from the outside and this is 36 and three quarters which is the same as two quarters all right so we're actually four and a quarter longer if i'm going to cut that in half i'm going to go two and then eight double the number on the bottom now i'll give you the right measurement so now i'm going to go two in an eighth inches longer than that which takes me to here okay and i also want to have let's go something simple like one inch yeah okay here we go okay let's do the same all the way around we'll set all of these off one inch we'll mark the outside okay perfect we'll put a mark on the end two and an eighth two and an eighth and the reason i'm getting all these measurements on here because i'm going to actually end up hot gluing these tracks to the surface so that they're embedded and flush with the material when it's all finished truth is guys when you're working with concrete and you're doing this kind of a mold you can install anything into the countertop you like you can be as creative as you want to be just got to remember whatever it goes against this actually ends up being the surface of the counter okay so now we've got all of our measurements we're ready to go time to get the hot glue back now we just came back from a break so even we're even a little confused with where we are in this process um these are my cutoffs all right they come in eight foot lengths so i got roughly three feet and then a little bit left over i'm going to glue this down just to create an edge so when i'm laying these they're perfectly square okay and i'm i'm just going to go a little dab on both ends okay and drop those on the line there and then the same for the other piece oh we had a couple seconds to get that perfect that is really cool all right there we go now because this is where the glass gets inserted we have to invert it to install it on the countertop so we're going to use this as our stop once that glue dries okay so we're going to do a couple of dabs on this edge and then i'm going to lay it down and then on the back side i'm going to do a whole run of glue just to hold it in place okay so let's see if we can get this to work for us i'm going to go like that line it up on the marks okay wow that's awesome this can be like spot welding here a little bit i just want a couple of spots it's important that that doesn't go anywhere okay here we are okay so a quick pro tip for you the trigger on this actually grabs the stick in around this region here in the gun and you'll see that the end of that glue gun is now over here this is kind of it's you see how this is the way the glue gun works is when you pull the trigger the lever is pushing the glue from back here and when the stick is to the end it doesn't work anymore so all you do put your new glue stick in all right and you can use the trigger or you can just push to get a nice solid line without having to use the trigger this makes it a lot cleaner a lot more consistent keep even pressure and you can work just as fast the glue is melting okay so this glue actually doesn't bond to the aluminum to the point where it's hard to clean off so i'm going to just use this to fill up the holes on the end of this track and you're going to have to do a couple of applications here right because you can't just keep filling this full of hot glue it'll never set okay so give it a few minutes after we fill the holes and we'll go around fill it all again then we'll be down to the next step um so now i'm just going to throw some brad nails from underneath just every foot or so make sure you use your safety squints when working with nails like tools like this now we're gonna have three individual ways of holding this all together now i have brad nails i'm gonna have hot glue and then the next step is to silicone everything together hopefully with all that being said and done that'll be enough to hold all this bad boy together while it sets up now there is a two more steps here one is the silicone and the other yeah i like that the other is the rigid pink insulation we'll do the silicone first because it's silicone make sure you get a gun that has a clean out nozzle preferably not covered in pl premium there's so much gunk on there i can't penetrate that tab okay that's better now the purpose of the silicone is actually does two things one it seals the joints okay so that the raw exposed edges of this melamine can't absorb water two it creates a rounded edge that when you invert the countertop it's a nice soft round edge on the top of the counter nothing wrong with having a nice soft round edge and number three it holds it all together silicone on melamine has much better bond strength than hot glue still not amazing because when you take the countertop off it'll just peel right out but it is a little extra added precaution now the goal here is to get just enough to do the job that you don't have to work it too much okay if you cut the edge and you put a nice bead on and you don't have to hardly work this material at all now we get our little tool out and i'll show you how this works okay so we have a short and a wide side bead i'm gonna go with the wide side you'd be surprised how much material is actually sitting there like this so just put in the corner and then get a nice gentle pull and that'll make that curve very consistent i did a real gentle pull and now i'm using a little bit more pressure just wanted to make sure that i flattened out the edge first before i start pressing it all in now there are other videos on the internet they show you you know use wax use this use the other scrape it all clean and then peel off the extra and if you don't put too much on there's nothing to really clean off so just use a little bit of care and you'll be fine but if you want to clean it all off after the fact you can this old house has a pour and they have the professional countertop guy and he's showing all of his he's using wax and that sort of stuff feel free to follow some of that advice if it makes him more comfortable i'm real comfortable with the silicone so i'm going to just go by hand okay so i'm going to also use a small little bead on both sides of the aluminum track here not for decoration more of a paranoia issue remember when you pour this you don't get to see what's going underneath when it's done it's done this is going to be a lot of work to then be disappointed that something got you know removed during the process so i'm embedding it in place with silicone as an extra step just a tiny little bit so that i don't get any material getting underneath that glue and moving this around potentially now the goal here right off the bat is take your rigid insulation and the only reason we're using it is because it's rigid and it's light and so if i fill the hole where i want to have a hole with this stuff and then put my concrete it really reduces the total mass that's going to be in there and i love that so i'm just taking my knife and this is designed in construction to overlap to help get a better air seal i'm just going to trim it yeah i just did that with an olfa knife if you don't own one of these you got to check out our amazon store and pick one up all right link's in the description guys best knife and construction in the world okay so that gives me two relatively straight edges here okay so my whole the insert is 32 by almost eight and a half what we want to do is find something that fills the space and leaves at least a half an inch on both sides so that my concrete will come to here my finish comes to here because it sits in real nice here i'll just bring this out for reference here we go right so i want my concrete to come up to this point on each side so when we're all done and we set this in it really sets in without any difficulty i don't want it sliding around too much we don't have to do too much to anchor it down and it can just be set in place and so this is the goal so we're going to measure this off so if i make something seven inches wide okay or around 180 millimeters and i'll do the same thing i'll go 30 and a half 7 by 30 and a half which is 760 and change okay so 30 and a half by seven inches piece of cake we'll cut two of those and then we'll show you we're just going to put them in place using a spray adhesive so max is over here just trying to wrap his mind around it when you're doing things backwards upside down it can mess with your brain until you've actually seen it completed but he was going so how do you drill the rest of the hole later and i'm like no this is two inches thick this rise here is two inches thick so now when i pour my concrete i want to see the foam exposed okay so then i know that when i pull it all apart the hole is already fully engaged and everything should be fine and if that helped anybody then it was worth saying here we go seven inches right and i'm just going to use this old finger technique here like this now this is not finished carpentry okay i don't want you getting too worked up over it one of the reasons why we're going with guesstimates and roughly's and on the brain around the measurement is because it doesn't really matter so much room to wiggle around if your mark isn't perfect or your cut isn't perfectly straight it will have no effect at the end of the day if you need this to be absolutely perfect again pull out a straight edge in your saw because you can use a circular saw to cut it so if the inserts that you buy are going to give you more trouble than this then that's what i recommend to do i've got so much room to play with here now you'll see how that knife cuts it pulls and then it tugs and you be careful that you're thinking every time you pull out a knife if i go what am i cutting through it's a good question to ask yourself every few moments during the day actually what am i cutting through if i do that because whenever you're using a knife pulling towards yourself under pressure you want to make sure that you're going to clear your hip right bad day at the office if you don't if you pull it and you cut right through one of your legs okay there we go two inserts and again it doesn't matter if they're perfect now this particular adhesive i'm going to spray off to the side here i'm just going to get at both ends just a little bit and then we're going to use another bead of silicone to hold everything in place so nothing gets underneath ah it's like silly string here we go roughly the difference in the gap should be about the same done piece of cake eh and roughly about there and done gotta love a good heavy duty spray adhesive spray great invention man you can get real creative when you know how to use stuff like this of course this bead here we're just going to goop it in oh now one thing that i never saw in anybody's video anywhere in the internet about concrete counters when you're done putting your silicone on you need to let this stuff dry overnight you can't just go to the next step which is in everybody's video to just go pour your concrete in here that's a disaster waiting to happen so do yourself a favor give yourself 24 hours for this stuff to dry at least overnight okay i mean if it's four o'clock in the afternoon and next morning you want to start you'll be fine but give yourself time for this to really set up and cure now i'm not going to tool this stuff because i don't need to right this is all going to be hidden buried underneath that insert there's no effect here if i don't get it all that's it that's the end of day one okay the only thing you have to do after this is let it dry and we'll continue the video like as if it's tomorrow morning all right guys it's the next day everything is nice and dry and now i'm just trying to make sure that my counter top is completely level and here's the reason you can't fill everything to two inches if you have a sloped corner oh yeah there is a weakness over here i knew that i walked in and i saw it here we go so let's get that taken care of oh all right now only one other thing we got to do before we start mixing up our cement and that is to vacuum out the interior we don't want to have any dirt embedded in the finish right so that's key here we go all right for the countertop today guys we're going to go with a rapid set cement it has very fine molecules in it it's almost a mortar okay it's really fine and this stuff is designed for uh well repairing bridges and stuff like that okay it's like really high strength so all right so the cement that we're going to use to make our countertop is called rapid set it's a cement all product this is more of a brand name okay so if you don't have that available that's fine just keep in mind what you're looking for is a cement with really fine particles it's more closer to like a mortar looking product it's designed for um industrial applications anchoring products underlayments and it also it says here casting lovely because we're making a cast so this is the kind of product we want to use it doesn't require a whole lot of help all right it has like a 9 000 pounds per square inch of strength after it's set and dried if you mix it at a certain amount of water because we're just making a countertop though i'm adding more water for flow ability and you can go up to four and a half liters of bag okay so that's a lot of water that's that's a full gallon and change now i went out and i bought myself a couple of pails that have got the measurements on them i'm going to split the bag into two different pours okay we're going to try to guesstimate half and half the secret here is we're going to be mixing this and instead of pouring it into the set into my mold okay we are going to be using a different system for setting the beginning of it i'm going to be using a sprayer to get a real continuous nice coating on the entire mold first before i start mixing this up and pouring it in that way the finish isn't going to have any lines and set lines because it does a set up so fast it's going to be like the other video that we did where we had layers you could see it was almost like a sandwich a cement sandwich we don't want to have that happen again so this way we're going to up the technique i'm using my hopper i use for textured ceilings and stipple ceilings and that's going to work out great as long as i can finish it and get it washed before it sets we'll be fine anyway we're going to we're going to see how this works this is a much better way of doing a mold than i've done in the past so i'm kind of looking forward to seeing how this turns out there it is i'm going to wear my mask yeah that's right there are no shortage of masks around nowadays might as well use it now this is not an n95 but honestly if you catch me on most days of the week i'm not going to wear a mask at all but for this particular case i figured might as well try to be a little bit responsible [Music] okay so we're gonna use the slow speed mixer there's the paddle blade this is ideal for cement okay whenever you're doing this start off on slow don't go too crazy you'll just end up wearing it all over your shoes [Music] [Applause] [Music] talk about flowability you can see all the bubbles forming from the chemical reaction that's the quick set that also means that when i'm pouring this particular cement i'm going to need some vibration to get rid of the air bubbles but because we're spraying the beginning we should have no problem with air bubbles at the surface so this is my blue hopper it's basically a spray machine it gets connected to your compressor remember that video i did i told you all my favorite tools this is why flexibility all right this opens and closes airflow so now we got air pressure okay nice and simple it'll hold up between your knees or have somebody else help you i'm gonna pour the contents into the bin okay here we go now in order to use this sucker i put it on the smallest hole [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] all right guys fire table day excited we're gonna peel this apart like an onion we're gonna install our gas lines my gas guy came by and did the connection right into the inside of the pit outside my boys are here today as well so we're going to just tear this apart clean it up carry it outside finish installing this bad boy i can't wait it's amazing how much strength is in a little bit of a brad mill wow just for reference give me an idea this is a four foot by eight foot table and uh it was seven bags of cement so 350 pounds it doesn't actually bond to the concrete so like if you're working at home and you're being creative consider the rigid insulation because this stuff is so dense and so light makes a perfect hole for my insert here we are at my fire pit now my gas guy did the connections for me he has a main shutoff valve over by the house and each of these have a gas in gas outline so he's done the gas in supply and capped it the gas is off at the house and with the key so i'm okay to open this up so what i got is the yellow gas line tape and we are going to just go like this and thread it on windy today hey holy cow now you know why we built this privacy fall without this privacy wall i think it wouldn't blow my hair right off there we go we're gonna just leave that in here remember the table has the holes in it we'll reach through pull these up make our connections and then recess our fire pit three two up sliding a bit that's all right go on keep going come on push guys yeah okay up towards max street water waddle straight out straight outside no stopping damn i got it why was nobody over there all right guys so full disclosure yeah that was kind of scary when the table snapped there um that was a a weird jagged cut based on us dropping it too hard now um i want to just give you a little bit of information if you are in a northern climate and you're going to have a hot table in a cold space in the spring and the fall you've got to use a wire mesh inside your cement mix and you've got to make sure that every six or eight inches is meshed and linked together okay because there's such a huge amount of heat that's concentrated and when you use the glass it really holds the heat down the middle of the table if you're in the south and it's a warmer climate then you can probably get away with just dropping in the rebar like you've seen in some other videos but you might not even need anything at all if you make it small enough but the point is that if you're dealing with expansion and contraction in cold weather climates make sure you use the mesh okay and even tie it together if you need to to make sure that there's uh direction changes in the mesh in every part of the table all right mine didn't have any of that detail in and around the fire pit crack and so that's why it damaged so easily i feel stupid but hey live and you'll learn right so that's my two bits let's get on to the rest of the video okay so we took our countertop out and it broke it was heavy and we just did not have a good enough plan to be able to stand there and discuss setting it in place gently when we were all dying so it dropped it broke and uh i'm making a video to show you how i fix it okay in the meantime i just gotta go on with the rest of this countertop instruction video and we'll assume that your world is perfect and you never make a mistake and it didn't break so you can follow this step now and that is to grab your cup grinding wheel all right now listen anybody in the in the business who's going to be doing concrete should have one of these for the grinder it's even really good if you're in the tile business right and you're dealing with concrete flooring and removing old tile having a cup grinder around just to get rid of raised sections that are in the way and deal with all those imperfections this makes a really difficult job a really simple fix in a hurry so we're going to use our cup grinder today because when you pour a countertop the side that's on the melamine is nice and smooth no worries but the underside where you're going to be sitting you've got to get rid of all of those ridges and pointy spots and rough texture from the pore process so that when people are sitting here they're not shredding themselves and their clothes on your countertop to do that we use a cup grinder because this will take the edge off just about anything so we're going to use a combination cup grinder and then wet sanding okay but cup grinding just does 90 of the work and then the wet sanding will make it smooth [Applause] wet sanding is actually a lot simpler than you'd think and it doesn't require an expensive tool i got this one on amazon 40 maybe 60 canadian great deal works great hooks up to your compressor all right because you don't want to use electricity with water so anyway check this out that's fun huh noisy as hell but it works all right now you can follow any rules of sanding that you like it works on hook and loop contact there so if you're careful you just line up your hook and loop now you're good to go package of 50 of these things is only like 10 bucks i could sand this right clean off all right now wet sanding for a reason because sanding concrete with water gives you a really nice finish so we're just going to add a little bit of water to my edge here okay and i'm gonna just go ahead and give it a once over that is awesome okay so what that does is it gives me a perfectly smooth surface and it actually it uh starts to show a couple of little minor imperfections that are in the concrete in my mortar joint here sorry like i got a dimple here didn't see that coming but that's because there's one more step here and that is to make a slurry and apply it on the mortar okay so you're making a like a paste out of the same material we made the countertop with gives us ability to fill this kind of stuff in come back and wet sand it smooth it also gives us the ability to make sure that all of these edges are completely polished back all right and then uh you know another hour or so it should be finished and ready to go so the next step of course after we have our counter ah there we go it's setting in the glass all right now this the the track that i found at the home depot is a little wider than the glass um if you can find an exact 3 8 aluminum track that'd be ideal but i had to go with half inch because of what was available that is the year i live in now i'm using a clear silicone product called ultra clear from dap and it's a sealant adhesive okay and i'm just going to put a nice healthy bead in the bottom of the track and set the glass into it now depending on the condition of your counter top when you're doing this i'm going with all clear if you don't have any rough edges that need rework and you just want to set it in and go with the clear that that works the other option is to set it and forget it if you have the right kind of track it'll stand straight up but for me my track's wide so it's going to be sitting kind of lopsided so i'm setting it in clear i've cut this wood to fit at the top i'm going to tape it all together i know it sounds crazy but it'll work and then when it's all done i'm going to have to do some more countertop repair work in my situation and so i'm going to make the countertop surface the last batch got a bit of flow ability to it but not too much because i don't want it to crack and flake i'm going to put all that in i'm going to tool it and then i'm going to take the time to take a little bit of that mix right around the edges of my glass and tool it all in nice and sexy like when that's all finished we can wet sand back everything to perfection the reason i want all the silicone in here even though i'm adding the more cement is i don't want the thin layer cement on the countertop to be the thing that creates the strength for the glass i don't want that to be the bonding agent because that could long term reach me in brand new problems with cracking and everything else let's drop this glass and when i say drop i mean place yeah just because it's safety glass doesn't mean it's unbreakable so i just ran into the fridge and i got a couple of cans of soda i'm gonna use that as something to rest the wood on and the question i guess today is pepsi or coke what do you prefer put your comment in the comment section let me know all right here we go oh that one is too long not long enough okay i'm actually going the wrong way with that now that i got this helper i want to make sure i'm relatively square here that's going to work right because these are all set in silicone right what this is going to do is enable me to have all my glass line up because now when the sail cone sets regardless what goes on with this countertop my glass will all be square and aligned it's going to be an amazing look and i'm not joking about the pepsi challenge i want to know do you prefer coke or pepsi seriously so again we're using the same mixes we made the countertop with and this is a mortar mix it's high grade for structural repairs and that's why we're using it just to have a little piece of mind after the fact again when this is set we'll have to come back with the cup grinder and then wet sand it but you can see we have more than enough material there to make a nice looking countertop right now i'm just gonna seal up that glass edge there [Applause] this is just gonna be blood sweat and tears guys but it all comes down to trusting your tools and your products all right so we're going to move on now i'm going to come back after this is set get it all sanded down so you can't see any of the seams and transitions from the different mixes of the mortar because we're making patches and repairs this is going to make this counter look brand new i can't wait [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well here we go right outdoor living at his finest double fisting canadian style listen guys uh if you like the idea of setting up yourself to have a paradise in your backyard you've got to subscribe to this channel all the videos for everything you see here are coming your way including the hot tub the patio i'm telling you this is going to be spectacular and one of the coolest things about this table is that it's built with building materials that are really easy to get a hold of the the stand and the lead stone the mortar bed here the glass this is all off the shelf at home depot and there's going to be links in the video description you can get a hold of the fire inserts okay as well as the blue glass that's it you got a couple of quick purchases on amazon that are actually in stock and in your home in 48 hours you could decide to build it this weekend and you'd have no problem knocking this off in a few days make sure you guys like and subscribe and hit the bell for notification because i'm telling you you're not going to want to miss any of the videos coming out soon if you want you can click the link right here and you can see our 1880s farmhouse renovation project from the very beginning cheers

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 202,028

Rating: 4.8921475 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, do it yourself, how to, fire pit, concrete table, concrete fire pit, concrete countertop, modern furniture, fire table, fire pit table, fire pit diy, fire pit build, fire pit ideas, fire pit cooking, fire pit ideas for backyard, do it yourself projects, do it yourself world, fire pit on concrete patio, concrete tabletop fire pit, concrete table with fire pit, concrete table top diy, concrete fire pit dining table

Id: nX8GyKOEmkk

Length: 62min 58sec (3778 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020