The Concrete Jungle

ReadyMade Magazine, Spring 2002, A Brief History of Concrete, Hollywood Augustus Rose

This blog post should have been written a decade ago. That’s how long I’ve wanted to attempt concrete countertops. The first issue of Readymade had several concrete projects, but none of them were technically countertops. I do, however, feel that countertops fall within the spirit of the challenge.

Pictures of my dated white tile counters are few and far between, because I hated them. Thankfully, I keep every single picture of my grandson. In this picture we’re making stone soup.

We bought our little bungalow in 2016, and had plans to remodel the kitchen as soon as possible. Work, family, and if I am 100% honest, my ability to overlook anything I’m not currently obsessed with got in the way.

Having so much time on my hands during the pandemic gave me the perfect excuse to procrastinate working on my current work in progress, 2Moons 1RIVER. I watched a ton of YouTube videos about creating do-it-yourself countertops, and decided that doing a skim coat over my existing tile countertops would be the quickest, easiest, and least expensive route to go. Yeah, right.

Cabinet clean out day.

First, why did I end up with so many potatoes? Second, why is there a Sperry in the middle of my floor? Third, this is the last picture of this terrible microwave, because it died the next day in an accidental yeeting.

I ordered what I could online, a palm sander, assorted sandpaper 40-1000 grit, Henry 549 skim coat, trowels, impregnator (this would become the source of many awkward jokes), and polycrylic sealer. My hopes were that this would prevent mid-project runs to the hardware store.

I started off by painting my cabinets crisp white, which completely soaked into the raw wood, and will require several more coats. My backsplash was a dingy aquamarine color, which I updated with a hunter green chalkboard paint. That’s when the real work started.

The counters had to be deglossed and then sanded with 40 grit sandpaper. We quickly discovered that regular sandpaper wouldn’t cut through the glaze on the tile. We had to invest in some diamond grit sandpaper. Well, actually, we aren’t Rockefellers, so we got cubic zirconia sandpaper. This was the first of many unscheduled trips to many hardware stores near and far.

All in all, we planned for 4 boxes of concrete, and ended up using 9. Also, we ended up having to enclose our kitchen, because every inch of our house was covered in concrete dust from sanding. There was SO MUCH SANDING. In the end we ended up with unique countertops that I love.

I will update this post with the cabinet doors and hardware soon.

The first coat of concrete goes down. My daughter began mixing bucket after bucket of concrete for me. We quickly learned that getting it smooth and even was going to be our biggest challenge.

Painting the cabinets before doing the countertops means that I’m going to have to redo them. No matter how careful I was a I still managed to get concrete drips on them. The top coat of concrete was mixed with black latex paint to add an interesting pattern and style. A significant amount of work still has to be done refinishing the cabinets, and filling all the holes my walls.