I've been seeing Concrete Countertops EVERYWHERE these days and I've been obsessed with creating one of my own. My husband and I are remodeling our bathroom and I thought this was a great place to try it out. I've read many blogs and watched several tutorials so I felt like I had the basics down. It can't be that bad right??? AND IT WASN'T. It was fairly inexpensive and I think it turned out to look more high end than many other budget friendly countertop options.
Disclaimer: The links in this blog are things that I have purchased with my own money and recommend to you. *****As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases*****
Supply List
Concrete Countertop Mix (affiliate link) - Below is a picture of the one I used and a link to it on Amazon to give you an idea of the type of material you will need. If you choose to use this brand I would recommend getting it at Home Depot because I paid $10.00 for the stuff below at Home Depot and on Amazon it's 3 times that amount. I used pretty much the entire 10 lb container for this project.
Side note: I read many blogs in preparation for this project and most of them use Ardex Feather Finish or Henry's Feather Finish. Both can be found on Amazon. Ardex runs about $30 for a 10lb bag and Henry's is about $17 for a 7lb bag. I noticed that home depot carries the Henrys brand so instead of waiting I just went there to grab some. When I got there they didn't have any in stock of course. After looking at all there products I decided to go with another brand that seemed to be the same stuff. It's basically just a powder cement that is for patching. The brand I went with is called SAKCRETE. They also have the black powder tint that I was looking for. They ran about $10 for a 10lb bucket of concrete and $6 for the coloring. It came in cheaper than both Ardex and Henry's and I was able to get the coloring I wanted. This was a win/win for me!
Concrete Countertop Color Charcoal (affiliate link)- Below is the one I choose and link. I paid just over $6 for this at Home Depot and I only used 1/4 of the coloring. Looks like it's a similar price on Amazon, however not free shipping. I also went for a very dark color concrete so if you want a lighter color you could easily do with this and still get a great result!
Concrete Countertop Sealer - The one I got was $30 at Home Depot. I could only find it in large quantities. I even checked online. This is kind of unfortunate because the space you need to cover is so small. I probably only used about $1.00 worth of the product for this countertop. Even though this is the most expensive part of the project, it can be used for other things. You can use the extra product to seal a garage floor or even a back yard cement patio area. I'm going to do concrete kitchen countertops eventually so I figured I would use the rest of it there.
Fine Sand Paper I already had some from another project so I didn't really include this as a cost
Plywood - This is optional. See below We ripped off the original formica countertop before we knew what we were going to be doing. If your starting from scratch you will need to have a base and I recommend a piece of plywood. I already had a scrap left over from another project so I didn't include this as a cost either. For this project you can just go right over your old formica countertops so don't worry about the plywood unless your gutting the whole bathroom.
Sheetrock knife or other tool to spread and smooth out concrete. I had these on hand so I didn't need to purchase anything.
Concrete Countertop Cost of Purchased Materials: $46.00
STEP ONE: Rough up the surface
When we did the demo work in our bathroom one of the first things my husband tore off was the ugly formica countertop. We also wanted to put a bit of a lift kit on our cabinet because it was super short so my husband took the whole cabinet out and then I sanded it and gave it a good paint job. When we put the cabinet back in we added a piece of plywood to the top so we had a workable surface that was roughed up. You could just do this project right over the top of your old formica countertop. If you do that you will want to rough up the surface a bit with some course sand paper so the concrete has something to stick to.
STEP TWO: Prep the space around you
Once it was all in place I taped around the edge. I gave about 1/4 inch of space to allow the cement some room to build up. I wanted a nice clean line around the top since I wasn't planning on adding any molding. I added newspaper because I didn't want to get any concrete on the freshly painted walls.
STEP THREE: The Application
After reading the instructions I determined that I should work in small batches. This stuff dried begins to dry very quickly! I began to mix my first batch. The concrete mix I used said to mix it 4-1 with 4 being the powder concrete and 1 being the water.
Here's my recipe.
1 cup concrete powder
1/4 cup Water
2 Tablespoons Charcoal Powder
I mixed both of the powders together and then added the water. A little water goes a long way so be patient with mixing. The first coat went on pretty thick compared to several other tutorials I'd seen. I think this mostly had to do with the fact that we used plywood as a base. It has lots of texture and it had a place for all the concrete to go.
Here's what the first layer looked like:
Side Note: I LOVED how it was looking with the blue cabinets I painted. The color is called "Admirality" and I got it from Lowes. All I needed was a $3 dollar paint sample and I've got about 1/4 of the paint left over. It really didn't take very much at all and I did two good coats inside and out. It's amazing what a little bit of elbow grease can do to a 70's bathroom.
What I learned After the first Layer
-For the first coat I had to mix up about 5 batches of this. I could have probably mixed a bigger batch than this but it does dry pretty fast so I wanted to play it safe.
-The black powder tint goes a long way!!! 2 Tablespoons gave me a really dark black color. It was a bit over kill. I changed the recipe up a bit for the 2nd coat.
You will just need to mess around with the color to get the shade you are looking for. I let this dry overnight and then started again the next day for the second coat with this recipe.
2nd Recipe
2 cup concrete powder
1/2 cup Water
2 Teaspoon Charcoal Powder
This gave me more of the color I was going for.
As you can see in the picture above the first layer was very rough. I wanted to avoid as much sanding as possible so when I added the second layer I really tried to get is as smooth as possible. Check out the video below to see how I got the concrete super smooth before allowing it to dry. After I added the second coat I let it dry overnight again and the next day I sanded. I really only did about 20 minutes of sanding. I just wanted to get the top smooth yet still keep some texture so that it looked more like stone.
STEP FOUR: Curing Phase
Everything I read said that you need to let the concrete cure for 30 days! Which was way too long for me. I also realized they were referring more to a concrete slab that is anywhere from 4-6 inches thick. I decided 1 week would be fine for my project since it was only about 3/4 inches thick.
STEP FIVE: Sealing the Concrete
The final Step is to seal the concrete. The sealer I choose was pretty easy to use. I just used a paint brush and put it on in 3 coats with about 4 hours of dry time in between coats. This is what the sealer directions recommend and it worked great. The sealer is a milky color when you first put it on and then turns clear. Since my area was so small a paint brush worked fine. In the future though I would recommend a small paint roller. I think it would be much quicker and would put on more even coats. The sealer begins to dry quickly so you only have a minute or so to get it on before it becomes tacky and you notice brush strokes.
Let it dry good after the final coat and your done!
I love the stone like color this has. I think it happened because I worked in small batches and the color might have been slightly different in each batch.
Watch the video below to see how I added this rough edge.
Check out the video to see the full process!
Disclaimer: The links in this blog are things that I have purchased with my own money and recommend to you. *****As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases*****
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