As I said in my last post, today's post is about sealing the concrete insert of our new fire table. And as I also mentioned last week, I made a mistake while sealing the concrete. But we’ll get to that. First, let’s talk about different concrete stains. There are basically four types of concrete sealers, as I found out while researching the best one for my project. The four types are penetrating, acrylic, polyurethane and epoxy. Each one of these performs the sealing in a different way. Acrylic, polyurethane and epoxy stains all build a protective film on the top of the concrete to provide protection, albeit using different chemical compounds. Penetrating sealers, typically some sort of silicon compound, provide protection by reacting chemically within the concrete. These don’t leave behind a protective film like the other stains. A key benefit of the penetrating sealers is their ability to let…

If you’re keeping track around here, you know that the fire table I’m building requires a concrete insert. You’d also know that I’ve never worked with concrete before, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that my first attempt failed. Time to regroup, take some lessons learned, and try again. I think it is likely that the concrete expanded slightly as it dried, squeezing tightly into the first mold. The end result was a stuck concrete insert. The mold design relied on the concrete dropping out of the mold cleanly, which didn't happen. I realized I needed to redesign the mold so that I could disassemble it after the concrete dried. It helped that the old mold was completely destroyed in the first attempt.  With the goal of full disassembly after drying in mind, I picked up more melamine and started the new mold. The second mold design was basically…

Almost every project I’ve completed in the past typically revolves around wood (with some exceptions). Wood is easily available, easy to cut, and easy to assemble. Unfortunately, it is also flammable. So when I made my fire table design, I added a concrete insert to act as a buffer between the flame and the wood. It is easy enough to included in a design, but now I had to try and build it. Welcome to the first episode of “Concrete Insert Building”! A widely used method of making a shape out of concrete is to use a mold for the shape. This is exactly what I did as well. To start, I had to take the dimensions of my concrete insert. SketchUp makes pulling dimensions easier. Easy enough. Next up was to build a mold that would create that shape. For the mold, I used a melamine board. Melamine boards…

I am excited to bring to you my next big build for our house! Ever since moving into our home about 3 years ago (even before that honestly), I’ve wanted to have a fire table for our patio. The idea of sitting outside with friends around a table with a fire in it just seemed cool to me. Not to mention the great potential for s’mores! While we’re still not at the point of having a bunch of friends over, I figured it would be a good time to make my long desired fire table. Like all of my builds, I had to come up with a solid design first. And here is where we hit a bit of a snag. Typically, wood and fire don’t mix. As an educated adult human, I realize this. So I wanted to do some research and see if others had come up with…