concrete counter
Submitted by Neal Von Flue on April 28, 2008 - 00:37
Some of you already know my wife and I are fixing up the house I grew up in, it's also the house my great grandfather built, so it's very amazing to me, to be working on a house that generations of my family have worked on. Much of the work that we can't do is being done by family as well, so that when we're all finished, we'll have the satisfaction of having continued in a tradition of everything in the house being done with care by people we care about...
Some of you may also remember wa-a-ay back I poured a concrete counter for my mom in her kitchen, it was my first time working with concrete and to wit, it turned out pretty terrible...At least I got it somewhat right the third time, (imagine the fun of chipping out 2 concrete counters!) but I've never been satisfied with it (she says it was the best 40 bucks she ever spent however, watching me try to figure out how to pour concrete).
So in this house we wanted one concrete island, and we enlisted the aid of my wife's nephew and friend, both guys who do tile and drywall for a living and are incredibly knowledgable about all things house. They built up a form and we poured the concrete today:
It's been colored green to go with the counter tile which will be a mossy-colored stoneware, and we're currently hand-painting all the backsplash tiles to fit in.
After a few hours the guys had the sides of the form off and the top smoothed to glassy:
The diamonds in the side are 1 1/2" black marble tiles set in a diagonal. Originally, I wasn't too keen on embedding anything, but my wife had the eye for it, and I'm glad she did, as they look fantastic.
I'm glad to have watched and learned from these guys as I'm fairly certain my mom's gonna want me to re-do her counter now.
