diy fourth of july...

We promise, we have sworn off DIY projects!  But, when we discovered that a polished concrete hearth was going to cost over 2000 dollars, we knew that wasn't in the budget.  After thinking it over, we decided that with the right product and with Tom's help, we might just do one final DIY project.  So, after talking to Tom, he said that he could have his guys build the mold for us and we could do the actual concrete work.  He made sure that if it turns out jacked up that it isn't his fault...we agreed that it would be our disaster and he isn't liable for the outcome. 

What better way to spend the Fourth of July 2012?  The mold will not be removed until Friday, so we do not know if it is going to be a disaster or not, but here is sort of a photo montage of the process.

We used a concrete product specifically created for countertops by Buddy Rhodes. You can check out his stuff by googling it...

The process is pretty straight forward - you basically buy these special bags of concrete, use color pigment (we chose smoke), measure some water, add one bag, add another bag, dig the concrete out and push it into the mold, kind of flatten it out, get more bags, add some water, get interrupted by a house stalker, try not to be rude to said house stalker, burn out a power drill, go to Home Depot to purchase another drill, try not to be rude to house stalkers husband, miraculously save the concrete that was in the middle of being mixed pre drill disaster, push that into the mold, and notice that it needs only one of the remaining two bags, measure half of the powder pigment, pour and mix one more bag of concrete, trowel it on and make it look as close to Buddy's finished products as we could! Sounds easy, right?

Like all awesome DIY projects, ours was no different...something always has to go wrong. If you followed along, our drill burned up in the middle of the projects and one of the warnings that is given by Buddy in his YouTube tutorials is not to stop mid project because you might not be able to match the color or it might dry weird or many other casualties of not completing the project all at the same time. Well, of course, our goal was to make Buddy proud of us and little did we know that the smoke rising from the drill motor was a sign of things to come. Oh yea, it died in the middle of the project. Unh Unh Unh...

Hope you enjoy the visuals if the above instructions didn't make sense!

I think Buddy would be proud of us...especially knowing the physical challenges we faced.  Only time will tell if the concrete filled out the mold properly...we will know on Friday when we remove the front of the mold... 

Stay tuned...