Making concrete countertops with your own hands. Photo + Video

Marble stains are fascinating. But marble is soft, which is why it is rare in the kitchen. Hard granite, but difficult to process. Concrete is an artificial stone, it is lighter, more diverse in color and pattern. A countertop made of acrylic or epoxy conglomerate would compensate for the shortcomings of stone slabs, if not for the price. Cast yourself from concrete, feel like a sculptor - what is not an idea? Immersed in technological tricks - it turns out that concrete does not conceal any special difficulties.

Features of concrete in the manufacture of kitchen furniture

The necessary properties of furniture concrete:

• does not crack at a small thickness, that is, it has sufficient viscosity,
• does not create an extremely high load on furniture supports,
• absorbs a minimum of heat
• the plate should be highly decorative, fit into the interior,
• lends itself to grinding, polishing, and therefore the filling granules are selected with hardness identical to concrete,
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• the mass is created of a homogeneous consistency, but thick, plastic - so that it can be filled manually by hand, without filling (the construction term “casting” used here is not entirely correct),
• as a result - a strong plate up to 40 mm thick, this is the main requirement.

The listed properties are achieved by adding washed quartz sand, marble chips, plasticizers, broken glass, and stable (dry / pasty) dyes to cement (grades no lower than 400).

Interesting: white grout for tile joints - this is white cement M500, which has all the properties of the molding material.

Chaotic mosaic is interesting. Pieces of polished onyx and marble are placed at the very bottom of the mold, the gaps are filled with a mixture of sand, cement, crumbs. Fragments at the bottom should not be polished - for a bunch. The finer the mosaic elements, the stronger the monolith.

Design and drawing

A product that is longer than 4 m must be reinforced. Depending on the method of reinforcement, concrete countertops are divided into:

• with chipboard filling
• reinforced with metal,
• fiberglass.

Reinforcement methods are as follows:

1. Triangle brackets up to 60 cm are welded from the channels and corners (the width may be larger), they are fastened with a step of 0.5 m to the wall in level using dowels. This provides access to an unfinished floor. The level from the concrete floor screed is h = 25 (floor) +850 (kitchen cabinets) - 30 - 30 = 815 (mm), the first 30 mm is the thickness of the concrete worktops, the second 30 mm is moisture-proof plywood of the base. The wall will be chipped to form a groove. The groove is filled with foam strips (the plate will “play” in size, heating up, and then cooling down). On the plywood sheet, the side of the countertop is mounted. Pour in. Plywood replacement - two fiberboard sheets fastened together.

1. A reinforcing welded grating made of a metal bar is placed between the concrete layers in the casting tray, after preliminary processing the insert construction with an anticorrosive composition. The rods do not reach the contour of the plate 5 cm.

1. With a total tabletop height of 35 mm, the first layer of fiberglass is laid after pouring 15 mm of concrete, the second after 20 mm, by pressing. The third layer is superimposed on top.

But chipboard filling is considered the most advanced reinforcement: with it, the countertop weighs less, the plate is drilled, it becomes possible to reduce thickness and reduce cost. An important point - the fiberboard itself is used a second time as an insert after the manufacture of the template. Paradoxically, the combination of fiberboard with concrete needs to be prevented (the coefficient of stretching of materials is different). The recessed sheet has the meaning of a substrate, even before contact with cement it is impregnated with drying oil.

A “sandwich” of both layers is safer to mount, transport. So that the fiberboard does not fall out of the nest, they wrap it with tape, the last stage is glued with mounting glue.

The combination of different methods of reinforcement is always permissible. Welded contours reinforce around large holes. It is important to prepare reinforcing inserts in advance, because the casting process lasts only 50 minutes. After the first setting, concrete cannot be moved and moved: the structure will be broken. Full hardening occurs after 2 weeks.

 Drawing template

When working with the plan, you need to decide where the hob will be, where is the sink. It is important to use the possibilities of cast countertops to the maximum: an arbitrary configuration allows place the sink in the protruding "crest" of the wave, the hob can stand across and not along walls. Perhaps you need to abandon the semicircular cliff of the table and give the edges a certain avant-garde shape.

Original, remember the modularity of the cabinets, upper cabinets. Having measured the wall, they look for options in the grid with a step of 20, 30 cm (scale 1:10), inscribing the hob, oven, hood and taking into account that all the furniture will be covered with the same type of doors, flanges - it should look complete, rhythmically.

Two strips of fiberboard set the value of each specific angle in place, fasten the sheets with a glue gun. Then they bring the sheet to the wall, mark future slots, ledges under the niches, wall turns, washing circuits, electric stoves, etc. on the fiberboard. The starting / ending reference points are not set on the plaster - 18 mm from the corners (the size of the thickness of the ceramic apron). You also need to consider that the real angles of the rooms differ from 90 degrees.

Color experiments

• Are they determined whether the countertop should be light or dark, maybe gray?
• Reddish, beige, yellowish or with a cold tint.
• Incoming blotches - dark on white. Then from what? The same for the opposite effect.

Cut the milk box, mix the sample, adding broken brown, green, clear glass, mica, amber along with dye. The result is adjusted.

Regardless of the additives, the concrete base is classic:

• for casting - cement + river (preferably quartz) sand, ratio 1: 4;
• for modeling - a ratio of 1: 3.

Water is added gradually. The density of the first solution is oily. The density of the second is plasticine. The first fill in the form. The second is kneaded for frame concrete.

During sample creation, the ratio of ingredients is recorded. The main components are ordinary. To improve the ductility of the mass, it is recommended to add 150 g of washing powder (solution) to 25 kg of cement. On sale there is a universal concrete plasticizer that improves viscosity and ductility.

Form preparation

A chipboard is placed on a durable table, exceeding the contours of the product by 20 cm. The surface is covered with PVC, a sheet of thicknesses. 2 mm (options - polystyrene, fiberboard). Stripes of chipboard (planed beams) on the drawn contours lay out a board greased with silicone, fasten it with self-tapping screws, clamping so that the silicone goes beyond the gap. Erase more. To form a facet, a hose with a diameter of 1 cm is fixed at the junction of the substrate and the bead, filling the gap of the hose and flat surfaces with window putty.

You can set the facet configuration yourself. For this, the wooden plank is thinned on the edge “under the scapula”, the profile is cut with a jigsaw. It is made from hardwood, water-repellent properties are obtained from impregnation with sunflower oil. Such an abacus window putty is distributed with broaches.

In order to avoid leaving the side from the perpendicular, it is strengthened with stiffening ribs from pieces of plywood, chipboard.

Circles are laid out with thick plastic, also fixing them on the “ribs”, drilling “in the blind”. Sharp bends make up strips of thick plastic of the same height as the bead, heated to 160 degrees. Work is carried out, protecting hands with thermal gloves. A tungsten filament spiral behind a metal box covered by an even larger box - a simplified heater design. Plastics choose refractory.

Places of pipe entrances, cutouts are laid with plastic plugs for shampoos, from old basins, polypropylene pipes, etc., secured with an adhesive gun. The sides checked by level are sprayed with liquid wax (soap var, as an option) from a household spray. Dry surfaces are reserved from sticking to concrete 2-3 times.

Table fill

The concrete mixer is filled with cement - 60% of the volume, sand - 10%, solid fractions - 29.5%. Water is only 0.5%. Check the viscosity, shift manually or in bulk from buckets. Movable concrete is distributed with a trowel. Plasticine is trampled with palms, small pieces of wood. Align on the upper edge with a bar (or a building level of the “knife” type). Aligned, cover without gaps with a plastic film.

A thick mass (for "stucco" tables) is laid by a team of manufacturers: in 50 minutes you need to have time to lay out, condense.

Laying decorative elements and inserting fasteners

The location of the recesses for dowels, metal corners, if any, are set in advance, marked on the template. Then the template is mounted on a wooden frame that coincides with the contour side. A template sheet is drilled (cut) on the marks.

The recesses under the dowels are formed by the dowels themselves, and the corners are welded into pieces of a reinforcing mesh. Moving the corners along the non-frozen mass, they find a match with the template, pour it on top.

Pre-molded brackets with protruding reinforcement are welded to the reinforcing mesh. The inserts protruding beyond the tabletop are aligned with squares and level according to the marks indicated on the template.

Grinding, polishing

After 2 weeks, the countertop is opened, moistened several times, dried - to guarantee the end of chemical processes. A dry plate is ground first. Then they turn it over, wet it, dry it and polish it with a grinder with grit P 80. Increase grain size by 50 values, continue to grind until a “mirror” surface is obtained. The process is completed by emery P 500 with added water. The grinder must have guaranteed moisture protection. In inaccessible places, a round stick is used with a sandpaper attached to it, a wooden block.

Restoration of an old concrete countertop

Soil for concrete is applied to the old concrete worktop, dried. Distribute a spatula similar to the previous composition. With a knife, awl, trowel fill the cracks. They grind the dried surface, give it water-repellent properties with liquid wax, polishing wooden surfaces (like Pronto).

Video: how to make a concrete countertop, a kitchen sink with your own hands - instructions

Above, we examined how to make a countertop made of concrete, below - the instructions for making a sink with your own hands.

Wide planes are convenient, visually expand the space. Equipping the kitchen with ordinary rectangular countertops can be achieved by cutting chipboard, MDF. Is it worth it to trouble yourself with the casting process if only rectangular shapes are planned? Still: in a small kitchen it is impossible to evaluate a spectacular wave-like line. You need at least 4-5 meters of free wall.