Kitchen finishing

Most parts of this building process took way longer than my optimistic estimate, but the kitchen (and plumbing) took WAY longer and it's still not quite done.  It's been about a year and a half now, off and on.  There were a few plumbing and wiring changes to the original plan, but the most time-consuming part has been the cabinets.  They’re simple plywood cabinets mixed in with some metal cabinets salvaged by my friend Sven from the old hospital that we just spray-painted.

Here’s a snapshot of a 3-D drawing.  I poured concrete countertops in place using specially made countertop forms from an online source.  Here’s a link to another house-building blog showing a similar process.  I did a much cheaper version than the link shows, using regular high-strength concrete and 14 ga. wire. You can get these locally at about one-tenth of the cost of mail-ordered specialty countertop mud.  We had some locally available countertop mud, but this was also several times more expensive.  I understand the mud we used was not as workable, sandable and otherwise forgiving as the custom stuff but I would do it the same way again if the gray color was desired. It helps to have a little experience finishing concrete and to add to it by watching youtube videos like this one.

 Here is the underlayment ready to attach forms.  You can see I put 2X4 falsework under the cantilevered sections and open spans to support the concrete until it cures.

And here is the concrete as it is right now, in December 2016, nearly finished. It needs a bit more shaping and then I'm planning to seal it.  If you want to do this yourself you might want to order a kit like this or this.  Or something like this acrylic sealer with a wax on top.  The simplest finish I found was just to use beeswax, but that is not very durable.  This is a pretty nice article explaining the different choices for sealing indoor concrete.  It doesn't look like we'll have countertops for Christmas, but hey, maybe New Years!

2021 update: We really like the countertops. I made one mistake I should mention. When sanding with diamond pads, a lot of fine dust is created. Be very careful not to inhale much of it. I had the thought halfway through sanding to use water to stop the dust. It worked to keep the dust down, but the water pulled some of the fines off of the counter, leaving a gritty texture in the area where I used water.