Fun With Concrete- How We Made A Unique Vanity Base For Our Bathroom

After a trip to World Of Concrete I was soooo inspired to use concrete in as many ways as possible in our new home. I told my husband I wanted an oval shaped vanity base in the little hallway bathroom. He thought I was crazy, as usual, but proceeded to frame it up for me and "make it work." We used Buddy Rhodes Concrete Mixes. If you haven't seen his stuff you should take a look-amazing stuff!

We've used concrete in many varying ways around the house.  Have you done any creative work with concrete?  I'm always surprised and totally inspired by the creative uses people come up with for concrete.  I've added a new postcard to my Cheat Sheet Postcard Series, a collection of postcards to collect and reference on a variety of topics.   For your free Subscription to the series, click here:  10 Ways to Decorate Your Home with Concrete.


With Buddy Rhodes system you are working upside down placing handfuls of material at a time gently "twisting" as you place them, leaving "pockets" as you fill in your form. You will later come in and fill in those "pockets" with a slurry. Here it is after we'd gotten it all filled in and my husband is leveling out the base and giving it an edge (what you are seeing at the top is actually the base when it's done).

You can see how thick the base will be.  I've got it filled in and am letting it cure a little bit before we remove the framing. I chose green for the main color and a grey for the slurry.

I wanted a glass bowl sink with a faucet coming out of the wall. Here you can see the hole for plumbing in the top of the base.

This is what it looks like coming out of the forms, you can see the "pockets" I was talking about. Now it's time to go in with a slurry and fill them in. I chose a contrasting color.

This was our biggest mistake in the project. My husband is still kicking himself. It really doesn't bother me too bad, but it would be nice to not have a seam line down the middle. Don't know why he framed it out with a seam here but he did. Live and learn!

Here it is all finished. Of course it's a trade-off.   A completely unique base but you lose out on storage. This would not work in any other bathroom in my house, but in this little powder room, to me it was worth it.

We will be finishing a bathroom in the basement eventually. I'm putting together plans for another vanity project- this time with storage. Can't wait to get started.

We have used this same Buddy Rhodes technique for multiple tabletops as well as the master bathroom countertop and tub surround, hopefully I'll be able to share some of those projects in the near future, very cool technique with spectacular results. 

I've since added some great wallpaper to this little bathroom.  If there's ever a room you can go a little crazy in, it's a hall bath.  I fell in love with this large floral print, hubby thinks it's a little much, girly was his exact word of choice, but ya know what.....  I'm living with multiple deer heads, amongst other things, in my living room so I think he can live with a girly hall bath, don't ya think?

Have you done any creative work with concrete?  I'm always surprised and totally inspired by the creative uses people come up with for concrete.  I've added a new postcard to my Cheat Sheet Postcard Series, a collection of postcards to collect and reference on a variety of topics.   For your free Subscription to the series, click here:  10 Ways to Decorate Your Home with Concrete.