We did something crazy last week. In a fit of frustration and maybe a little rage (ok, not rage) we pulled the sink out of our master bathroom, disassembled our vanity area and pulled out a little tile from our shower. I think we (Micah, Dadtractor and I) were suffering from a fit of temporary insanity. The tile thing can be explained. We have a leak. We thought it was in the corners and had to do with bad tiling but it was the door. The leak was so tiny that we didn’t notice it. I think we both thought it was condensation and not a leak. We learned slowly that it was a leak when we got the dreaded water marks on our wood floor in the bathroom. While it is a pain to replace, this may justify wood floors in a bathroom. With wood, you know when there is an itty bitty leak going on. With a little help from Lowes and silicone caulking, we think we’ve solved the leak problem. We’re taking trial showers to make sure there are no more leaks. We hope to get the tile we pulled out replaced in the next few days.
There was no good reason for us to pull out the vanity and sink area except that it looked cheap and was SO ugly. We spent all that time on the shower and bath surround and neglected the half the bathroom. I don’t have before pictures. I should have taken them but could bring myself to do it. So with no plan, we took apart half our bathroom. The sink was laying on the floor and the makeshift vanity taken apart.
It took us a week to come up with a plan. Our plan was (note the past tense) to install built-in shelves behind the toilet and cut into the half walk for additional by the sink storage, replace the mirror and finally keep the sink but rest it on a floating grey quartz slab. Dadtractor we’d be able to find a remnant for about $60 which working perfectly with our $100 budget. We went around to several places looking for a remnant and everyone said they had remnants but not in the color we wanted. We could have a piece cut but it would be at least $159 plus tax.
After lots of pouting (by me) Micah decided we needed to take things into our own hands – literally. If we couldn’t find the grey slab in our price range, we’d make it. So that’s what we are going to do, make out own slab out of concrete. We’ve found so many online tutorials for diy-er that have been really helpful. We think we can do it ourselves as we only need a 1.5 thick piece that is 36 inches by 23 inches. We’ve already bought the material to build our form and we hope to have it built over the next two nights. Micah is very confident we can get this thing made. Dadtractor is skeptical but I’m very OK with that. Dadtractor was skeptical about wood floor on the stairs, the ikea table in the main floor bathroom, cork floors and white counters. Now he loves all those elements in the house and has on occasion taken credit for them.
This is sort of what we’re going for
image via Wheat Ridge 80033
Our current problem is the cement. Some people have used a general, ready to use Quikrete concrete mix. We’ve been doing our research and it looks like Quikrete makes a mix specifically for counters. None of our local hardware stores have the counter mix in stock but one said he could get it easily and would call me back with a price. The general, ready to use concrete would cost us about $4 a bag and we only need one. I think the countertop mix would be $14 a bag. Anyone have experience with either or both? Also, we’re seeing mixed recommendations for using a mold release. Some people use it and others don’t. Any other advice for first time concrete counter diy-ers?
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