Quick and Easy Concrete Steps

[Music] oh my god what is this what happened i have no idea what or why i'm looking before i show you this i need to explain something my name is michael and today i'm going to show you how i made these concrete steps they are very easy and fairly inexpensive to make and i'm going to show you some pretty interesting things that happen along the way we're going to do some experimenting let's make something cool [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] well some of you may recognize these steps from the cement all video when i tried to resurface them with uh raps at cementol uh tried to buy myself a few more years out of these guys and did not work i think these steps were just a little bit too far gone and i know what you're thinking but it was not the cemental that failed it was the steps if you look real closely the cemento it hung on real good to those steps see cement doll still attached to that piece real well but uh the rest of this piece is all step so you know what that means these steps gotta go [Music] [Applause] [Music] that was [Applause] [Music] [Applause] awesome a lot harder than it looks all right so let's go to the shed and make some molds speaking of sheds if you don't know the story behind this beautiful building behind me please watch this video now if you don't know anything about weaver barnes they will come right out to your property build you a shed on site or have the shed pre-built in their factory and just roll it out and plop it right on your property they even came out with a new model this year and they're calling it the grill shack it's absolutely gorgeous now if you purchase a weaver barnes shed i get absolutely no kickback but i want to sweeten the deal if you buy a weaver barnes shed and have one built on your property and use my name i will personally make you a personalized concrete plaque of your very own but you're probably gonna have to let me know about it because matt has absolutely no idea that i'm doing this let's build some molds all right making these uh tombstone shaped molds uh is not gonna be as hard as it looks we do have to make two of them though one big one one small one obviously now obviously we're going to be using malamin like we usually do for these molds but we're also going to be using this thin whiteboard material it's got the same coating as malamine only it it's thin and flexible and bendy uh laying out the curve can be a pain in the butt but uh here's some of the things i did to make it easier i measured out and marked the sides first those gave me my two reference points then of course you want to mark out your center point that's your third reference point i then clamped down some scrap blocks at the ends 3 16 which is the thickness of my bending material away from my marks [Music] i then took my whiteboard bending material then simply bent it to my center point at the peak and then lightly mark it out with a marker then cut that shape out with your jigsaw or a bandsaw now depending on how good you are with one of these you might have to smooth those edges out with like say a belt sander or something then your base is done then you want to rip all your sides at two and three quarter inch to make up for that two inch thickness of your project cross cut them to size and as far as the angles are at these two corners on the big guy the angle came out to be about 25 degrees and on the little guy it came out to be about 27 degrees after you attach all three sides with inch and a half screws then that's when you're going to attach your white board if sides are going to be using an edge mold make sure to leave a gap for any excess to run out the back double-sided mounting tape for the edge mold [Music] and just uh stick your edge mold on i'm going to have plans available in the description below for purchase for both with and without the edge mold i am going to seal up this back corner as well as this big gaping gap that we have in here with 100 silicone now the if you don't know my handy dandy glass cleaner technique then uh link up above let's just take this project just one step further with a little compass design all right so i'm about to draw our compass design on the mold with a pencil obviously this is completely optional you don't have to put a design in if you don't want to again i will have the dimensions for the compass design available for purchase in the description down below but before i draw this ever since i can remember i've always loved compasses and part of the reason for that is life is just i mean that's what it's all about isn't it direction it's all about direction so i incorporate compasses and a lot of the things i do but that's why i got this tattoo of a compass on my forearm but you know who gave me this compass my niece did this tattoo for me she's an aspiring tattoo artist and she is phenomenal so if you live anywhere near southeastern michigan click on the link below and make an appointment with her i i am so proud of her she's going to be very famous one day so make sure you get your tattoo now before she's famous but if you're not looking to get a tattoo please visit her on her instagram and show her some love she's got some fantastic work for you to thumb through on your instagram so get on there and pound on that like button and while you're getting your tattoo have her text me i want to see i'm excited by the way i'm learning very quickly that it would have been a lot easier to do this before i put all the sides on all right so uh this next step uh it's gonna be fun because i have no idea if it's gonna work or not it's it sounds good it looks good on paper uh but we're about to find out so we can put a design in our concrete a number of ways but i wanted to give the illusion that we have grooves in our concrete by making v-shaped silicone tracks i guess you could say so i cut my tip at an angle like i usually do but then at the very tip i cut a v shape but i didn't want to touch the bottom portion because i want that to ride along the surface of the mold does that make sense so uh let's let's try this out seems to be working [Music] so far not bad not as v-shaped as i want it to be but i think it's gonna work i might have to clean it up here and there but no big deal just remember when you're done with a line to release the pressure i keep a rag handy [Music] we we we still don't know if it's going to work or not [Music] so i can i can definitely see that i am going to have to clean up some of these intersections and lines with a razor blade after it's cured some of them i might even wipe up right now and redo but other than that not too bad for our first time right hey that's what experimenting is all about right [Music] what don't worry i'm still a rapidsight guy just changing it up a little bit today do some experimenting that's all [Music] so part of the experimenting that we're going to do today is i get comments questions all the time on whether or not the rapid set flow control rabbit sets plasticizer will work with a regular portland base like quikrete i have no idea and i never know how to answer that question but we're about to find out [Music] [Music] the answer is yes it will work with a regular portland-based cement as far as what that does to the strength and what it does chemically i have no idea [Music] alrighty [Music] i just realized that i didn't spray it down with wd-40 got ahead of myself buy another three bags and we'll be all set [Music] now let's reinforce and then we'll mix up some more slow creek i mean quick creep [Music] all right so since we're working with a portland base today we are going to have to let this sit for a minimum of at least three days before we can de-mold this guy then uh in the meantime i'm going to cover this with plastic i am going to have to babysit this for the next couple of days and keep it moist keep it wet basically water cure it and then we'll go from there and see what we get i i honestly don't know what to do with myself because i'm used to being able to take these out of the mold in one hour [Music] oh my god this is seriously the heaviest thing [Music] oh my god what is this what happened i have no idea what or why i'm looking i have no idea what i'm looking at and why before i show you this i need to explain something i did not color this at all i did not put any color in this is just plain old concrete it's black pure black [Music] i mean i mean it looks cool i just can't explain this it had to have been the flow control that did this though it had to have had some sort of weird chemical reaction uh future michael here just wanted to let you know that i did do some test pieces without the flow control still came out with a dark finish i have a feeling that the quikrete 5000 just comes out dark when you form it up alright so the mold did what i wanted it to do the silicone stayed in place after we demoled it now we know that we can repeat this probably as many times as we want well until the mold deteriorates anyway but now you can put steps in your backyard and your front yard on this side of the patio on the other side of the patio on the front pad if you got a shed you can put it in front of your shed again the only thing i would do differently is i would probably use a straight edge to make these lines straighter that's it [Music] [Music] all right now we're going to lay our first course of retaining wall block you can pretty much use whatever retaining wall block you want but if it has that lip you don't need that you don't want that so go ahead and chisel that off with a masonry hammer or a regular ham or whatever now at both corners i did cut them at a 45 degree-ish angle i scored them with a simple cheap mason blade on an angle grinder now you can get the same thing done with a chisel and a hammer it's just going to take you a lot longer as far as how i laid them out i actually used the mold as a template i laid it down scribed it with a pencil and set these back one inch because i want a one inch lip from the step as far as this big empty space here typically you would fill this with earth or debris or whatever now it just so happens you can you can fit exactly four of these in the middle they're very cheap very inexpensive it'll probably just make it so much easier for you to just buy four more bricks and put them in the center now me i've got plenty of debris left over to go ahead and fill in this space so that's what i'm gonna do i honestly don't think or don't know how necessary it is to put construction adhesive down before i put the top on but i guess i'm just doing it for a little added insurance this top is heavy it ain't going anywhere then we can just place the first step down [Music] [Music] what do you think i'm gonna wipe this down let it cure and dry for a little bit and then we're gonna take some tasty b-roll of this thing [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] well aside from the discoloration which i'm going to call marbling i don't think it turned out too bad the technique is definitely gonna need some tweaking but uh i'm gonna leave that up to you so don't forget to post your versions of these concrete steps on instagram hashtag michael builds community i can't wait to see your take on these steps before i forget i did seal these with the simple coat sealer i'm very curious to see how this does on exterior concrete steps so now i will say i i'm not 100 sold on the quikrete 5000 because i was really missing my rapid set mortar mix on this project but we'll see well that's it for this video if you liked it please give it a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed yet please think about doing so i promise you won't regret it and i'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Michael Builds

Views: 214,662

Keywords: 100% silicone, Silicone edge mold, cement countertops, cheap, coffee table, compass design, concrete counter top, concrete countertop, concrete finishing, concrete polishing, concrete sealer, concrete steps, diy, diy concrete, do it yourself, edge mold, grinding, home improvement, how to, inexpensive, polish, polish concrete countertop, polishing concrete, polishing concrete countertops, quick and easy, quikrete 5000, rapid set, rubber edge mold

Id: E8UPAu28JKg

Length: 17min 15sec (1035 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 01 2022