How To Make A Unique Piece of Furniture With Concrete

 I am completely infatuated with concrete, call me weird, (that's alright you won't hurt my feelings) but the incredible things that people are doing with concrete keeps me excited and inspired to do more.

My love affair with concrete prompted me to add 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. 

This is a conference table my husband and I made for his work.  Here it is all framed up.  You can see the edge liner we used and the veining that was added with caulk.  We will be using Buddy Rhodes Countertop Mix for this project.  After mixing you place it by the handful, gently twisting as you put it in the bottom of the framing and work it up the edges.  As you add handfuls you will be forming crevices that you'll fill in later with a contrasting color, makes for a great texture.  This technique is done upside down, so the bottom of your form will be the top of your table.

After you've placed your handfuls and built up the edges, you add another layer of material filling the form roughly 1/2 way.  At this point you add in your wire mesh, then continue filling the form, being careful not to press too hard so you don't rid yourself of the crevices you've made.  Here it is, full, with the hardware added to attach to the I-beam base.

This is what you have when it's removed from the forms.  Now you'll clean it off and start filling it in with the slurry.  Depending on the depth of your crevices this could take multiple coats.

Using a wet sander you'll sand it down working your way from rough sanding pads up to extremely fine pads in a similar fashion to sanding wood.  This is the most time consuming part of the process, and plan on getting wet!

All sanded and sealed.  Turned out beautifully. 

At the same time we also built a small side-table for my husbands office.  To see more on this project check it out on Hometalk.

I have a few small projects planned for this season and would like to make some legs for a wood tabletop and bench I worked on earlier this year.  We are also working on an outdoor kitchen so I'll have lots of concrete playtime.  Can't wait!

I really love playing around with concrete and take advantage of the opportunities that come my way to learn a little bit more and get some play time in with this wonderfully versatile product.  

I've added a new postcard to the 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. 

BTW, this is the same technique we used in our bathroom to make our vanity base.

Have you done any creative projects with concrete?  We'd love to see your handi-work.