Update to the Concrete Countertop Update.

Twenty minutes pass after I posted my concrete countertop update.  The phone rings.

"Hello?"

In a muffled, sad, quiet tone I hear:  "I am so sorry."

"OooHhhOOhhh, thanks babe," I say.  Sniffle.

I love Mike for lots of reasons but one thing he's really really good at is using that savvy logic stuff on me.

"Well how bad is it?" he asks.

"It's pretty sad babe, I dunno, it's broken."

After about fifteen minutes on the phone with him, I'm breathing again and no longer pacing.  We decide to go with it as-is, cracks and all.  Ultimately maybe they are not as terrible as they seem.  We both figure one of the cracks will be hidden by the sink.

And hey, I'm sure whoever buys our house after us will rip all this out anyway, so...and hey, it's all part and parcel of the material and it's not going to be perfect and the cracks add character and it will still perform its function.  Right?  Right.

That's the thing.  Concrete doesn't behave like other countertop materials we're all used to and therein lies the issue many people have with it.  Regardless, no countertop material is perfect -- stains, watermarks, oil splops, chips, cracks, hot pan circles, burns, porousness, whatever, what-have-you....No countertop bends to our will nor desire for the Ultimate in Gleaming Perfection.

Going in, one should understand how individual, if you will, a material this is and be accepting of and expecting of not only the fascinating coolness in its imperfections, but that it will behave differently than granite, marble, quartz, man-made, soapstone, laminate, etc. blah blah.  I suppose that's why there's quite a volume of distaste for concrete as a countertop material, and I understand that, I get it.  It's not for everyone and that's a-ok.  I'm weird though -- I celebrate quirks and oddities.  I seek them out.

Now I'm feeling bad for concrete, getting a bad rep.  It's genuinely awesome stuff.

Standing over the countertop I hang up with my sweetheart, I stare at it a moment, give a few head tilts, lean down to pet it (yeah, I am that weird) then let out a Big Sigh of relief.

Crisis averted.  Or I should say, re-pour averted.

Well all righty then!  I best stay on track if we're going with it, right?  Clap clap, wipe the sniffles and let's get this puppy moving along then!

I decide to seal it up so it would be ready for install come next Mike-day-off.  And anyway, since it's a small piece of countertop, there will be plenty of leftover sealer in this pint container if we decide to ditch this counter and go for the re-pour.

Here's that sealer I picked up, just again, fyi.

The packaging says it doesn't change the concrete as it's an impregnator, not a surface sealer.

When I ran my first swipes I had a gasp moment of oh, well, that looks quite changed to me but duh, right, it's wet.  *palm to forehead*  Then I was kinda diggin' the wet look.

Then I was really kinda diggin' the wet look.  Then the sealer started to dry and, snap, I realized I was supposed to be wiping not ogling.

The wet sealer made the cracks look super spiffy actually but also highlighted several more hairline slivers along the thin parts that I was unawares which eh, was too cracky for me so the wet look idea fell by the wayside.

Looks neat, right?

After a few good wipes, the concrete generally went back to looking like it had earlier.  Which was fine as I liked it that way to begin with.  The spots grew on me.  Ew, that sounds gross.  I mean the spots in the concrete were now an aesthetic benefit, not a detriment.

Wiped of sealer.

Twenty four hours passed (the bottle says it dries or cures or whatever it does in 24-72 hours) so I opted to put another coat on.

It darkened up a trace and evened out the spots a smidge but not by much.  Still likable.  The surface, while already surprisingly smooth in part thanks to the polyurethane and possibly the mould release spray, felt even smoother.  Neato!

All right.  It's sealed.  I'm debating waxing it as that's typically the next step after an impregnator sealer.  But if I'm going all-in gimme that concrete-y concrete look, I think I may forgo and see what happens.  Let's roll the dice, baby.

But!  So....guess what?  Yes.  done done done done done done done done done done done done done done done......

The Vanity is Done!  It's all in and DONE!  Holy cats and dogs, people, DONE!!!  That's all three, folks:  bold, underline, and italics done.

Be sure to come back and read all about it next time!

done done done done done done done!!!  Oh and done done done!!!!  Happy dance done!!!

Yay!!!!