Okay... this was a freaking epic project!!!!! And I am incredibly happy to say that it's finally DONE. After 3 full weekends and a couple long nights at woodworking class, we have a beautiful concrete dining table that looks so awesome in our new house.
It all started when we moved in, and I had a dream to build us a dining table that fit our space perfectly. At first I wanted a rectangle farmhouse-style table, which I figured would be pretty easy to do in wood shop. But then when we moved in, we felt like there were already a lot of square/rectangle shapes going on in the house, so my friend Emily had the fantastic idea to do a round table instead. I'm not sure how I didn't think of this to begin with, since I love round tables! You can fit more people around them in a smaller space, and no one ever feels like they are stuck on the end.
So it was decided - round table. Then I started thinking about making this out of wood, but I couldn't find anything I liked after a few hours of searching Pinterest. Instead, I found
this. Yes, you read that right. $2,500 for a table. I had already mentally prepared myself to build a table out of wood, so how much harder could it be to make the top with concrete?? Challenge accepted!
I knew that the first thing I needed to do was make a mold for the tabletop. This was a bit of a wild goose chase, but in the end I decided that a big peice of melamine would be the way to go for the main surface. Once I figured out how to cut a perfect circle, I would use rubber molding (like the kind used for landscaping) around the edge to finish the mold.
Bryan and I made our way to Home Depot to buy the melamine. First I couldn't find a peice big enough for the 4 ft diameter tabletop. Finally I found a peice, but it was HUGE! Like 4 ft by 6 ft. And I have a tiny car... VW Golf... 2 door! We dragged it over to the big saw in the back, and searched the store for someone to help us cut it in two. We finally found a guy, but then he said that they couldn't use the saw to cut that type of material... great. He pointed us over to the hand-cutting station, where Bryan and I broke a sweat using a hand saw to cut this humongous thing in half. Yeesh. We were pretty exhausted by the time we finally got through it, but we were excited to be done so we paid for it and headed out to the car! Only to find that it STILL didn't fit in the car. Lol!! So I bought my first-ever roof straps - problem solved :)
After one day of sketchily driving to work and climbing in and out of the driver's side window (since the doors were strapped shut), I made it to wood shop and it was time to figure out how to cut a perfectly round circle out of wood. My awesome teacher helped me build this jerry-rigged compass out of a nail, a skinny piece of wood, and a jigsaw.
We taped and clamped the jig saw to the long peice of wood, then measured 24" from the saw blade (half the 48" diameter I wanted) and hammered a nail through the compass and into the melamine. It actually worked incredibly well! I had a perfect circle in no time. I knew I wanted a couple test peices for the concrete pouring, so I used the compass again (shortened) to make two smaller circles, one of which I cut in half, since I had extra melamine. Why not?!
After I had my perfect circle, plus a smaller perfect circle and two perfect half circles, I started thinking about making the mold and pouring the concrete. I kept getting stuck on how thick it would be, how much it would weigh, whether I would need to put rebar or some sort of wire reinforcement in the middle... and it was a lot to think about, so I started searching for some other options. I stumbled across
this awesome post on the Home Depot blog. Instead of pouring a top that would be something like 500 pounds and might break someone's knee cap during an otherwise wonderful dinner party, coating the outside of the table with concrete seemed like a really great idea! So that's what I did. Andrea's instructions were awesome, except that the whole process took WAY longer than she describes on the blog. It was a bit faster on the warmer days, but still took a while for each layer to dry. Here's Bryan smoothing on the first layer of concrete and modeling his cool safety gear:
A couple tips for the concrete top - when mixing the concrete, pour the water before adding the concrete. It mixes a lot easier! Also, as soon as you are done smoothing a layer, fill the bucket with water and put your tools in there too, to avoid some hardcore scraping to clean everything off later. We ended up doing 4 layers on everything. This made for nice rounded corners and a relatively smooth look on top. Check out the beautiful cones and dumpster in front of our house... can't wait for this construction to be over!!
For the base, I found
this super thorough and helpful blog post which I followed almost exactly. Just make sure to check for square on all the corners (mine are far from perfect, but look fine), and use trigger clamps to keep everything in place before screwing! Overall this base was incredibly easy and came together really quick. It looks awesome too. Even if you don't have a saw at home, you could measure everything out really carefully and have them cut it for you at the store.
Last but not least, we screwed the top to the base, and sealed the top with the food-safe countertop sealant recommended on the Home Depot blog post. I was a little disappointed with this final step, since the tiny bottle of sealant was $75 and it actually DID change the color of the table, even though the blog said it wouldn't. But, luckily, I am happy with the color since the slightly darker grey actually looks better in contrast with our light grey walls. But be forewarned!!! We will probably seal the smaller tables with a cheaper concrete sealant since we don't need those to be food safe. TBD. See what the top looked like before sealing:
After all that, we cleaned up the space and got to start enjoying our new table. Here is the finished product! I am in love!! Pay no attention to the shims under the feet... that will be a quick fix :)
Below are the materials I used and their costs (minus the things I think everyone would have around the house). Some of the stuff I already had, and a lot of the tools I used in wood shop so I didn't have to buy. I bolded the prices for things that I did have to buy, so that I could add it all up and prove to Bryan that it was still a bargain for an uber cool and beautiful table :)
Materials for both the top and the base:
- Disposable cups for stain, measuring concrete, etc / Around the house
- Tape measure / Around the house
- Safety glasses / $4
- Dust mask / $5 for a box
- Orbital Sander / $30
Materials for the top:
- Melamine or other big piece of wood / $35
- Roof straps.. optional if you have a nice big truck! / $10
- Nail & duct tape for making compass / Around the house
- Jigsaw / $25
- Feather Finish Concrete / $17 each (x3) // $51
- Big concrete float or trowel / $13
- Little concrete scraper / $6
- Bucket / $3
- Stirring stick(s) / Free
- Sponge / $2
- Sealant / $75 (ouch!)
Materials for the base:
- 8ft 4x4 Douglas Fir / $8.35 each (x2) // $17
- 8ft 1x10 Premium Pine / $15
- Handful of 3 inch and 2 inch screws / around the house
- Drill / you should have this :) if you don't you can buy one for ~$100
- Trigger Clamps / $30 for a set of 4
- Wood glue / $3
- Kreg Jig / $40-$100 depending on what you want out of it
- Miter saw / Cheapest one at Home Depot is $100
- Table saw (only if you're cheap like me and buy the pine that needs ripping) / Cheapest one at Home Depot is $150 so just buy wood that's the right width...
- Paint brush / around the house
- Paint thinner (to clean brushes) / $7
- Stain - I used a pint of Watco Danish Oil in Dark Walnut / $10
So overall it cost me $277 to make an awesome 4 ft round concrete dining table, plus tabletops for a 2 ft round coffee table and two half-circle bedside tables!! I'd also like to point out that even if I bought ALL the tools and paid myself minimum wage (because, let's be honest, I am not a skilled construction worker) for the ~30 hours I spent on this project, the whole thing would still cost less than half of that Restoration Hardware table. So, yay!
