Easy DIY Faux Concrete Countertop

Hello, I'm Jennifer with Jennifer Decorates. Today's video is going to be so much fun. I'm going to show you how I created the look of a faux concrete countertop. Now when we first were building the store, we were on a budget. Everybody's on a budget. I wanted a concrete countertop for our checkout area. So a guy came in and he quoted us at $2,500 and I thought, okay, I can do this myself and so how I did that was using Venetian plaster and I'm going to show you exactly how I did that. So I'm at home in my living room, my new home. We actually just moved in two weeks ago so I'm going to be really excited to show you some new videos about that but let's get started on this project. Now the concrete countertop in our store, it's been there two years, it has held up phenomenally. Let me show you what supplies I used to create that. You just use a metal spackle knife. I guess you could use plastic, either one. You need Venetian plaster. It's white. You can get it at any home improvement store. I chose this color, Gun Metal Gray by FolkArt. Any black latex paint is fine and then the gray color I chose, it's called Chelsea Gray by Benjamin Moore. Now I'm going to move some stuff out of the way. I've got two plates here and the reason is, is because I'm actually going to mix two different colors and we're going to mix the color into the Venetian plaster. The reason we're going to do that is if you just do the Venetian plaster, let it dry and you paint over top of it and say a few months down the road you get a little chip in it, it's going to chip to white. However, if we mix the color into the Venetian plaster, if there happens to be a little chip, it's just going to chip color and you'll never see it. All right, let's open this up. So I'm going to take my putty knife and put some of the Venetian plaster onto the first plate. Now the reason I've got two plates here is we're going to mix one color that's a little bit lighter and one color that's a little bit darker. That gives excellent depth and texture and color to your finished project. Now we're going to start with the Chelsea gray and I'm going to pour it into the Venetian plaster and stir it up and I just use a plastic knife. So we get it all stirred up and now we're going to work on the darker color and I'm going to put some Chelsea gray in it. I'm going to add some of the gunmetal and I'm going to not totally add that black right away. Black can go really far. So I'm going to put a little bit on the side of the plate, dab a little bit in, see if I want it darker, to which I do. So I'm going to add the rest of it and stir it up and then I've got one darker shade and one lighter shade. So I've got my two colors and by the way, the one in the store, I did that a little bit, I liked it just a little bit darker black but right now I'm going to do more of a concrete color look. So you're going to start with your lighter. This is like cake icing and so you're going to put it on like that. Now the cool thing about Venetian plaster, if you give it about three to four minutes, it starts to set and you're actually able to kind of create even more of texture and bumps. It depends on how you want. If you want it really flat, leave it like that but let it sit for a minute but I'm going to dip into this darker color. Now watch, I'm going to put just a little bit here. Okay, now I'm going to let that sit for a minute. So let's come back to that in about three minutes. So I said three to four minutes to let it dry but if you let it dry for five or six, it's fine. What happens is the Venetian plaster, when it starts to dry, you're going to take your spackle knife and you're going to kind of drag across it and it kind of resists you doing that because it's starting to dry. Look right here, that's just a really cool effect and because I've got dark in here and light, I'm going to start dragging it through and if you drag more than you want, just pull it. It's still on your spackle knife. Just kind of come back into it. Look how cool that looks. Don't get over worried about creating something perfect and then you know, sometimes if you get a little too much dark in one spot, don't fret about it. Just go into your light. Just pop it on top. This is not perfection. You can go in different directions. Concrete does not have a pattern. Okay, I love this. I love how it is so what I'm going to do, I'm going to go to my next spot and repeat the same thing over and really that's all you do. If it dries and you look at it and you think, man I needed some dark over there, don't fret about it. Just dip back into the dark and put it over it. Now depending on where you're going to use this, I have one client that wants it used on a tabletop so we're going to keep it a little more smooth. But you know if you want it a little more bumpy, just you keep adding it and then just kind of drag it across. If you want it more smooth, kind of keep it flat to the ground. Now you just keep doing each section at a time until you're done and you let it dry. What you're going to do at the end when it's all dry, let it dry overnight. But you're going to use, I talk a lot about polyacrylic. I love it because it's water-based but for this you want to use polyurethane. Polyurethane is oil-based and it will dry really hard. Now in the in the store we did, I think I did four coats and I mean let hours dry between those coats. Don't get too over anxious. But adding that polyurethane on the top seals it and you've got a fantastic surface for pennies on the dollar. So I showed you the faux concrete countertop that was in the store that had different shades of black than the one today we did was in gray and light gray and dark gray. But I want to show you one I finished for a client and I did it in different tones of brown. It just goes to show you this is a great alternative for a very inexpensive DIY for any countertops or tabletops. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to subscribe to my channel because we have a video out every week. I'm going to put a link to the supplies I used in the description below. Have a wonderful day.