#so she can sort out shift coverage ahead of time instead of In The Moment

[helianthus-hellion]

had to call out sick from work all three days i work this week and i'm a little terrified that HR or my boss is gonna require a doctor's note or something bc i do not want to find an urgent care clinic open on A Fucking Sunday for this. and the anxiety is not helping the Feeling Like Shit aspect of being sick.

[sergiovinazzi]

Stolen - Lando Norris x Reader (Chapter Two)

2.9k words, rated E for everyone :)

Lando’s voice, amplified by the TV speakers, echoes around the humming Red Bull garage. “I’m fine but I’ve been better. I can say that I’m not in perfect condition, I’m not gonna lie. Some work to do mentally of course. I talk about that a lot, and mental health and mental strength is very important. I’ve not been sleeping that great and so on… not ideal and I’m feeling a bit sore, but I’m not the guy in the worst position after Wembley. I’ll work on it, I’ll make sure I’m in the best shape possible, and I feel like I can still go out and focus on what I need to do, and that’s the main thing.”

Your mind races as you listen to the boy plastered across the many screens revisit his experience at Wembley. He sounds awful; something about his cadence making it even more obvious that he is really, truly shaken up. The wavering pitch, awkward pausing, fumbling for words; everything about the way he presents himself is serving as a brutal reminder that being physically unscathed is no indicator that harm was not dealt. Even as the interview moves past the topic of last week’s Euro Final, you notice the shift in demeanor and your heart aches. You worry that bringing the watch to him is a bad idea, that it could prompt unbidden memories and disquieting feelings. You understand how big of an event Silverstone is from your dad’s tangents alone, especially for an English team with an English driver, so you reevaluate whether your decision to come was selfish, one made solely to alleviate your own sentiments of guilt rather than to verily right your believed wrongdoings.

On the journey to Silverstone, your dad had made multiple attempts at lessening your stress, even opting for variations of the if he steps out of line I will put him right back in his place father speech. Unfortunately fruitless, your father’s attempts mean you remain just as anxious as when you had first discovered that you managed to obtain a stolen wristwatch.

You’re not sure whether it’s the crisp morning air or your nerves that sends chills across your flesh, but your attempt to ground yourself subtly doesn’t go unnoticed by your dad as he passes you in the garage.

“Time is ticking,” he informs you, a smirk playing on his lips. “No pun intended.”

You roll your eyes in an attempt to downplay your apprehension, but your voice gives away any and all signs of the false confidence you hope to portray. “Can you do it for me?” you plead.

“I can’t just stroll on over to the McLaren garage without an invitation or proper reason, especially not a couple hours before free practice starts. It doesn’t look good.”

“It’s not like me walking in there instead would look any better,” you retort, gesturing to the Red Bull logo plastered across the chest of your black polo. “Your branding isn’t what I would call subtle.”

“Look, the McLaren team are a good sort. They’ll help you out if you just explain the issue and show them the watch. I’m sure Lando will understand too, he seems like a pretty nice bloke,” your dad reassures you.

Sighing, your eyes meet the floor, fingers intertwined with each other as you fidget incessantly. Before you can speak up in further defiance, however, an additional set of footsteps grow nearer and you freeze at the voice which speaks up.

“Christian, how much longer until our media slot?”

You lose your breath momentarily, locking your gaze onto your shoes as you wait for the person to pass by.

“About five minutes, Max,” your dad replies. “We were just about to head over.”

When you hear the footsteps grow fainter, you risk looking up, thankfully being met with only the observance of your father. You don’t even realize that you’ve tensed your body until your dad points it out.

“Relax,” he says. “He’s not going to say anything here, especially not on a race weekend.”

Nodding, you feel your shoulders ease up but you remain quiet.

“Anyways, like I said, our media briefing and interviews start soon and we’re after McLaren this weekend so they should already be back in their garage,” he says, realizing that you still appear troubled by the task ahead of you. “I promise you, everything will be fine. Just go over there and I’ll meet you back here when we’re done. The quicker you head over, the quicker you’re done with it and we can all move on." With that, your dad walks away and you reluctantly leave the Red Bull garage, adjusting your shirt as you straighten up.

You take a brief glance at your phone, turning it off after you try one last time to keep the picture of the boy imprinted in your mind. Eyes darting rapidly, you attempt to scan the paddock for anyone looking remotely like him while you make your way towards the bright orange and blue indicators of the McLaren garage.

The frequency of orange-clad individuals grows the further you stray from the safety of Red Bull’s garage, and you feel your heartbeat begin to increase. Worried that someone would stop you before you could approach the one person you had traveled all the way to Silverstone for in the first place, you quicken your pace.

You’re mere meters away when you spot him. Pushing past a few people while trying to keep your eyes trained on him, you watch as he turns around to talk briefly with the woman next to him.

Huffing, you muster up the little confidence you have and tap him on the shoulder.

His confusion is evident and the blonde woman next to him does not look pleased to have been interrupted. The silence is palpable as they stare at you, expecting an explanation for the abrupt ending of their conversation.

“Hi,” is all you can deliver. You’re at a loss for words while the woman next to him seems to lose what little patience she has with you. Everything you had rehearsed beforehand, gone. Your mind is foggy and your mouth feels dry as you try to compose yourself. “Um, can I talk to you for a second? It won’t be long, I promise.” Your voice breaks at the end and you wish you had never agreed to get on that stupid red-eye to Silverstone in the first place.

Lando offers a look of sympathy and then turns to the woman next to him. “Charlotte, could you just give us a second?”

Pursing her lips and turning on her heel, the woman walks away, heading towards the mouth of the McLaren garage. She’s far enough away that you’re out of earshot, but close enough that you feel her gaze linger as Lando turns back to face you.

“Hey, don’t worry,” he tells you with a smile. “We can take a picture if you want or I can sign some stuff for you.”

“What? No.” You shake your head, mentally slapping your palm against your forehead and forcing yourself to get a grip. Idiot. “Fuck, sorry, that sounded so rude! It’s just-” you rush to explain.

“Oh no, it’s okay!” he stammers. “I should’ve guessed from the Red Bull shirt anway.”

You both share an awkward laugh before you compose yourself and reach a shaky hand into your bag.

“This is going to sound so weird, but I was online shopping for a new watch the other day because I lost mine, and I’m pretty sure I bought the one that was stolen from you. I didn’t know anything about it, I swear. I just...well, here,” you say, offering the watch and its temporary box to Lando.

He looks at you, taking the box only to go wide-eyed at the contents inside.

“I have all the information that I was able to get, but the ad was taken off of eBay and I really wanted to do the right thing and give it back to you. Please don’t be mad.”

“What the hell?!” he exclaims, earning a few looks from people passing by and catching Charlotte’s attention once more. “Sorry, sorry. How did you get this?”

Amused, you laugh quietly while he studies the watch intently. “That was my dad’s reaction too. Basically there was a listing for it on eBay and it was sort of an impulse buy,” you explain. “I didn’t see the news coverage of what happened until afterwards and I felt awful. I’m really sorry you had to go through that, I genuinely had no idea.”

Shrugging, he plays it off. “Nothing I can’t handle.” It’s hard to miss his sudden change in attitude from the interview you watched moments ago and you can’t help but wonder whether he has your or the watch’s presence to thank.

There is a brief moment of silence between you both before he continues. “How much did you pay for it?”

“It was so cheap, honestly,” you say. “Nothing compared to the original price, I’m sure.”

Charlotte, alerted by Lando’s attention-grabbing reaction to being reunited by his watch, returns to where the two of you are standing. “Oh wow, did you find a replacement watch for him?” she asks you, clearly impressed by the apparent likeness.

“No, Charlotte”, he corrects her. “It’s my one. Look.” He hands the watch to his PR manager, who receives it so gently you think she’s afraid it might shatter in her hands. Flipping the watch between her fingers, she studies the small engraving on the underside of the face.

“Oh my god,” she whispers.

Lando nods. “It’s the exact date it was given to me, there’s no way anyone else could know that and make a copy of it.”

You feel the need to justify yourself to her. “It was listed online and I bought it before I knew anything about the situation. I didn’t even really know who Lando was until I saw what happened on the news, I swear.” You anticipate her anger or disapproval, preparing yourself to withstand the lecture you’re about to receive and mentally promising that, as soon as it’s over, you can run back to your dad and tell him you just want to go home.

But it doesn’t come.

“I can’t believe it!” she exclaims. “We all thought we’d never see it again and you found it on accident.” The smile she gives you sets your mind at ease. “Technically, this is a police matter now, so I’ll have to hand it over to the right people, but this helps us tremendously. Did you get any information about the seller?”

You explain the situation to her, about how the listing was taken offline but you have a printout of the messages and address the seller gave you, which you hand her from your bag. She lets you know that someone may get in touch soon to ask questions but not to worry, that it’s only a formality. Eventually, she asks if you’d like to watch free practice from a spot in the mobile hospitality unit, but you politely decline, explaining that you needed to get back to your dad in the Red Bull garage instead.

Charlotte smiles fondly at Lando and presses the brim of his cap down over his eyes. “Come on, you, we have to go and get ready now anyway.”

He takes off his hat, cheeks flushing as he makes an effort to quickly brush the curls lining his forehead, placing it back on and dismissing Charlotte with a wave of his hand. “Okay, just give me a minute.”

Once the two of you are alone, he pulls out his phone. “Do you have Venmo? I’ll pay you back, it’s not fair that you had to waste your money.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it.”

Lando seems unconvinced. “It’s really not a problem.”

“Seriously, it’s all good.”

“Well,” he continues awkwardly. “I have to go, but are you here for the whole weekend or...?”

You shake your head. “Just today. I’m not into Formula 1, I find it a little bit boring.”

“Seriously?! The fastest cars in the world and you’re calling it boring? Why even come to something like Silverstone if it’s so boring?” he feigns offense, doing air quotes as he imitates your apparent disdain for the sport.

Laughing quietly, you shrug. “I have family at Red Bull, so it was basically just luck and convenience that you were in the U.K. this weekend,” you clarify. “I don’t really understand Formula 1, that’s all.”

“Fair enough, it’s not for everyone I suppose,” Lando replies. “So who in your family works at Red–” The end of his question is drowned out by the sound of his name called by an evidently disgruntled, impatient engineer.

He sighs. “I’m sorry, I’ve really gotta go, but, um,” he exhales with a nervous laugh. “I still feel like I need to repay you in some way. Do you want to go get a drink after the race on Sunday? I’m busy for the next few days but Sunday night I’ll be free. Only if you want to, of course, I don’t want to, like, pressure you or anything.”

You laugh, appreciative that the nervousness was shared. “That– Yeah, that sounds fine. I’ll give you my number.”

He types your details into his phone before apologizing once more, thanking you again, and rushing off into the garage.

——

On Sunday, you let your dad believe he’s the one who convinced you to stay for the entire race weekend, but it’s the promise of Lando’s company later that night and the endearing text messages on your phone that prompts the desire to see this weekend through. You had spent the previous nights on your phone, going through driver and team Instagram accounts, as well as the F1 website, to get an idea of what to expect. Typically, it would pain you to look through motorsport news pages, especially with so many of the reports centering around Max and his vie for the championship as of late, but you manage.

You notice almost immediately while settling into your spot at the back of the garage that the energy does not match your own. You are enthusiastic and eager, while the rest of the team is stressed and rushes around you. Presumably, it’s because race day impacts their livelihoods and paycheks whereas it only dictates your family’s dinner topics, but, nevertheless, your excitement refuses to simmer.

Unfortunately, if it was weird for you to be seen at the McLaren garage before the first free practice, it would be infinitely more suspicious for you to be lingering around on race day, so you were not able to catch Lando at all since your initial meeting on Friday. However, you made sure to message him good luck beforehand, to which he thanked you and expressed excitement for your upcoming night.

“If you need anything, just ask. I’ll be on the pitwall,” your dad says, snapping you out of your whirring mind. He notices your obscure behavior, quick to comment on it. “Is it weird? Being here after so long?”

You nod, shrugging. “Unusual, for sure. So much has changed since the last time I came and watched, but I’m excited, though.”

“Well, it’s always good to have you here.”

Reciprocating your dad’s grin, you silently send him on his way. He exits quickly and leaves you to your own devices. Though, your own devices look to consist of impatiently waiting for the race to start and scrolling absentmindedly through your phone. Ironically, your boredom with pre-race antics appears to create quite the dichotomy against the chaos exuding from the garage you find yourself encompassed in.

Regardless, your attention is regained when frequent cuts are made to the drivers in their cars, and you recognise that the race will be starting soon. You are temporarily startled when the cars begin moving without hearing an official announcement, but quickly realisee that it is merely a formation lap and no one else around you seems to be paying all too much mind to it.

When the cars return to their positions on the grid, you watch eagerly as the lights flash and the announcers begin yelling. You keep your eyes trained on the orange car towards the front of the grid, watching Lando so intently that you almost miss what happens to the cars in front of him.

Your eyes go wide as you watch the events unfold: the Red Bull car out front collides with what you identify as a Mercedes, spinning and slamming into the barrier. Gasps chorus across the garage as the screens replay slowed clips of the crash as an announcement states that the safety car has been deployed. They replay it from every conceivable angle, your astonishment at the severity is present upon your first viewing, but it’s only after the sixth clip that it clicks in your head that the person in the car is Max.

“For the second time this season, Hamilton and Verstappen clash and tangle on the opening lap, but, this time, it is ending in dramatic consequences for the championship leader.”

If you had perceived the pre-race behavior in the garage as chaotic, this was a whole new level of absurdity.

People rush around you while orders are shouted and frustrations are verbalised.

Your dad is angry.

The last time you recall him behaving like this was when your younger sister had broken the wine glasses he had bought for your mother on their honeymoon. You, however, ignore his yelling and remain encapsulated by the TV, releasing a breath you didn’t know you were holding as the events unfolding finally, finally register in your brain.

Car number 33 is in the wall and out of the race, and your ex-boyfriend is inside, silent and unmoving.

____________

tag list @lovebynorth @its-astrotea-love

[themagicalmysticalboy]

Hi. Can I request hurt!John story? I thought it could be based on his car accident in 1969 but let's change some details of it - he was driving alone and ended up seriously injured. You can begin with Paul and the others arriving to the hospital after receiving the news... or whatever you choose 😉. So angsty story with some mclennon (but not necessarily; they can be just friends).

a/n: the thought of writing yoko has kept me from ever writing this request. But imma write it and pretend she doesn’t exist 😜. also I have no self control so this story goes through a lot more than just Paul showing up at the hospital hehehe

Nobody has to guess that baby can't be blessed/‘Til he finally sees that he's like all the rest/ With his fog, his amphetamine, and his pearls

He Breaks Just Like a Little Boy

John had thought himself rather fond of Scotland. He had visited many times before for pleasant vacations and stops to meet family. But in all these years and through all his visits he had never actually driven its roads, having the luxury of a driver. On his solo trip, he remembered exactly why his arrangements were as such.

The sky was dripping with fog that crept down from the foothills, reaching out with thick claws that effortlessly encapsulated the road. The small apertures between the paws of fog were filled with mist that left sheens of dew across the windshield. With his wipers going at a steady metronome's pace he flipped between high and low beams, unsure which way was worse. Mimi had surely told him the correct answer but his nerves and general troubles with driving had him dumbfounded. 

The road ahead appeared completely deserted so he had no concerns with continuing to flip back and forth. The distraction of the lights left room for error in the ways of speed. He was pushing 20 over the determined limit. In these conditions the absence of a speedometer, or in the event of ignoring one, it was impossible to determine how fast the world outside was passing by. John kept at his pace, even when he had settled to keep his lights on low beams.

In his vain attempt to see more than two meters ahead, he hunched forward with squinting eyes and tense muscles. Music was playing at an almost unperceivable volume, turned down multiple times over the course of the descent into fog.

Entering another aperture of mist, he relaxed, letting himself blink properly and his fingers release from their bleached white grip on the steering wheel. Once his eyes had opened again, a set of disembodied lights sent him rigid. His senses were set on blast: eyes wide open and bursting with color, the taste of copper coating his mouth, the smell of his leather interior and cigarettes somehow amplified. The intense sensations did nothing to harbor a coherent plan.

He reacted on gut instinct as the lights were backed by the shape of a car. Horn blaring, he jerked the wheel to the side. It was almost instantaneous that his stomach jumped to his throat, body leaving the seat to press harshly into the seatbelt. He was a feather made of lead.

**

In the late hours of the morning, Paul finished readying himself for a trip into town. He grabbed up his keys and wallet and made for the door. Before his escape could be made, the phone rang. He lowered his lids and shifted his weight from foot to foot, trying to decide if he should answer it. With a resigned roll of the eyes, he jogged to the phone. 

The words that came through the line left no room for pleasantries, throwing blades that sliced through his reality and let it drain from around him. Pressure built against his skin with each sentence, heart pounding through his limbs.

His voice was void of emotion when he asked, “Have you told the others?”

“You’re the first I’ve called,” Cynthia replied. Cynthia. That's who was talking. Paul had not even processed her voice.

“Okay.”

He hung up, one arm left limp at his side as he gnawled at his fingernail. The world was not coming back to him. It had bled out and left him stranded, unable to move or react. Echoes of what Cynthia had said reverberated off the walls and assaulted his ears.

“... an accident… He’s in surgery… They don’t know if…if…”

Everything ushered back into color like a punch to the gut, leaving him stumbling into actuality. He fell into a chair and caught his breath.

 He had to get to him. He had to leave.

Rushing back to the phone, he threw together the fastest trip to Durness humanly possible. The trip, though only an hour and change by plane, was excruciating. Void of distraction, or want of, Paul was shedding strings of sanity like a dog’s winter coat. Nothing was fast enough until it suddenly was all too quick.

Once in the last leg of his journey, a small taxi cab, he began to dread the thought of arriving. Though still a few miles away, the antiseptic smell of the hospital was already pungent in his nose. The cramped waiting spaces and grim reality would tug and drag on his psyche. 

And he was not proven wrong. He had arrived first but it wasn’t long before George and Ringo filed in. They all shared anxious glances upon entering the private room they were ushered to but didn’t speak a word.

George ended up slumped in a seat, head in hands, as Paul stood and tapped his foot, his mind still shifting in and out of focus. It was Ritchie that had broken the eerie stillness. He was biting down hard on his lip, pacing the room. As if he had just realized the other two existed, he jumped when his path crossed Paul’s.

Paul’s eyes were dead in their sockets but Ritch’s pinged over his face with something desperate that made Paul want to conjure a sort of reassurance. He fell severely short, only able to muster a thin lipped hint of empathy.

George came in for the save. Paul, too engrossed in his own turmoil, barely noticed him getting up and moving towards them. He took Ringo into a tight hug that was warmly reciprocated. They both breathed in one another before breaking. He patted Rich on the shoulder then turned to Paul.

He hadn’t the heart to tell his friend he’d rather be left alone and was consequently enveloped into his arms. And maybe it was for the best he had not stopped him. Something calming and familiar shallowed a hole in his heart. George’s ever-comforting presence should never be put to question. He hugged George back with a grim intensity that surprised himself. It cracked a dam but did not break it.

“Don’t lose hope.” With that the hug was broken, leaving Paul with a warm heart and cold body.

In time, they all sat together on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, backs to the wall. Coffee cups and ashtrays were all around. The TV that sent extra illumination to the room was widely ignored, set at a low volume. At some point, a doctor had come in to update them. John was under close watch but out of surgery. It hadn’t done much to put anyone at ease but it drove in the hope George was keen to stoke. 

So they kept at their quiet conversations and heavy silences. The atmosphere was so odd. No one was bringing up the band dissolving. No one was arguing. Instead, a rather blissful suffering blanketed the room. At an excruciating crawl, night was arriving, the sky drifting from blue to inky black. 

Everyone was growing tired from their adrenaline crash, staring at nothing with half lidded eyes. Ringo had taken the plunge and was asleep on Paul’s shoulder. Paul’s arm was wrapped around George and George was slumped back to stare at the ceiling.

With a steady knock at the door, they were startled back to life. As the doctor came in, the three rose to their feet with varying speed.

“Good evening-”

“He’s alright, yeah? Can we see him?”

“We’ll get there, Mr. Harrison.” The doctor collected himself and looked over a messy chart. “Mr. Lennon is recovering as expected. I can’t go into detail, seeing as you aren’t blood, but his injuries were less serious than we first thought.” He looked up at the trio. “He’s asking for visitors in the morning. Have you any idea of relatives arriving?”

“His aunt, at the very least. I’d assume his son and ex-wife as well,” Paul answered cordially.

“I’ll let him know, then. Now, if you wish, you may sleep here. Blankets and pillows can be gathered. But there is a hotel only a mile away.”

They looked between one another and came to a silent agreement. “We’ll stay.” The luxury of comfort would gladly be dispensed of.

Sleeping in the cold and bare room sent Paul back in time. He felt 18 again, sleeping in a backroom in Germany with George nearby and Ringo in the place of John. At least he’d been able to sleep easier then- full of beer and dead tired from performing. Now, it took a long time but sleep finally crept into his eyes.

Though Paul was the last to sleep, he was also the first to wake. He gathered coffee and fresh carts of cigarettes before George or Ringo so much as stretched. As he waited for them to wake, he watched the news. At the moment, the camera was pointed to frame an audience gathered with candles and signs. All with well wishes to John scribbled and painted across them. 

“Have we traveled back to ‘63?” Ringo’s voice was full of sleep as he pulled himself off the floor.

Paul was glad to learn he was not the only one feeling the blast from the past. With a nod of acknowledgment, he poured Ringo a cup of coffee from the side table. Leaning back in his seat, he handed him the cup. Ringo pulled a cigarette from his pocket before taking it and mumbled a “Ta.”

It wasn’t long before George woke as well, leaving them staring at the TV that switched between actual news and coverage of the crowd outside.

“Think John’s enjoying this?”

“Think? I know. Deserves the treat of it, anyroad.” Paul huffed.

“We’ll find him off his head with pain meds waving from the window if he’s left alone too long.”

“Flashing the crowd with the backless gown on his way to bed.”

Lifting their spirits with some senseless banter, the wait for their turn to see John was less dreadful. Any bittersweetness, though, drained from Paul’s being when it came time to actually see John. Much like the journey to the hospital, the tail end of his wait for John was coming all too quickly.

They were filed out of the small room and his heart was fading with every step. It did not want to leave the strange safety of the room and Paul could not blame it. It was set and done and nothing dangerous happened. Now he was ushered into a terribly galvanizing and risky endeavor of a fresh space and unknown circumstances. As the door came to view, his heart fast tracked to full opacity and shot into his throat.

George and Ringo looked so painfully normal in comparison to how Paul felt. Surely all they were thinking of was how happy they were to see John. Not how scary it might be to see him broken. Not how one word could fuck everything up. 

The desire to pivot on the spot and run was shamefully present when the doctor held the door for them. Paul was last in line and heard the cheery greeting from Ringo before so much as seeing the foot of the bed. 

His eyes darted down to stare at George’s heels as he entered the threshold, following their path until he found a seat. Paul meandered in, jumping when the door shut behind him. He stopped in his tracks. 

“Glad the guests could finally be bothered to gather. Now the party can really start.”

With the sound of John’s voice pulling at his chest, Paul finally looked up to find him staring directly at him. He was right there, covered in scratches and bandages. There was a cast on his arm, a bruise over his eye, and a large swath of gauze peeking from the neck of his gown. His face was blushed with color, nonetheless, looking as alive as ever. When he truly looked at John he found himself wanting to cry. Why? He couldn’t have explained it to anyone but he knew the feeling swirling inside. He bit down on the inside of his cheek and gave a thin lipped smile.

“Think you’ve done enough partying without us,” Ringo said while he sat at the only other seat in the room, leaning an elbow on the bed. A smile was splashed across his face.

George leaned back pleasantly. “This is why I never let you touch my car, you know.”

John huffed. “I don’t think I’ll be touching a steering wheel ever again.”

The words were all lost on Paul. He couldn’t stop staring into John’s eyes until he finally broke contact to speak with George. Feeling uneasy in the center of the room, Paul moved to the wall, looking John up and down until he’d memorized every cut and bruise. His fingers were filled with pulsing blood, the sensation gathering up his arms as the moments passed.

No one looked at him or asked him anything. He was just a fly on the wall, chewing on his nail. So there was no warning when George and Ringo stood up. Paul jolted back to reality and stood up straight, ready to follow them out.

“Can you stay?”

”Hmm?” Blinking wildly, Paul noticed John was speaking to him.

“We’ll be back in the prison cell,” Ringo quipped before shutting the door on them.

The urge to sob spiked again. He gulped down the lump in his throat and let out a shaky breath. “Hi.”

“I look that ghastly, do I?”

Paul stared at his awkwardly shuffling feet and offered a breathy laugh. “No.” His voice cracked with the single word and burning tears sent pins into his eyes. Something in the moment sent his dam crumbling down.

Alone with John, he found absolutely no reason to hold back. So he didn’t bother. Fully absorbed by his presents, he took long strides to the now empty seat, falling into it. Without losing John’s gaze, he gently took his hand, feeling the rough cuts as he rubbed circles over the back.

Tears tracked down his face. His lip quivered. His heart brimmed full like a tidal wave crashing to shore.

“Hi,” he said again, this time with a voice damp with dejection. He sniffled with a painful smile stretching the corners of his mouth, threatening to rip from the center. He reached out to brush John’s hair from his face with a shaking hand. “You scared me, y’know?”

John pulled his hand away and Paul could feel the tidal wave retreating. He sucked in an aching breath. Rejection.

It all came back, though, when John held the side of his face, losing his fingers in Paul’s hair. “I’m sorry.”

With a fickle laugh, Paul nuzzled his head closer to John’s hand. “Don’t apologize- not for that.”

John’s head tilted as he pet Paul’s hair. “‘Bout thought you didn’t want me any longer. Seeing me all banged up and bruised. And that stare of yours. That should be categorized as some sort of weapon.”

A soft cry, that was supposed to be a laugh, rose from his throat. He leaned forward, hovering over the seat, and gently kissed John’s chapped lips. John fully reciprocated, fingers gripping his hair ever so slightly.

When they parted, poignantly slow, Paul swung his legs into the seat so he could comfortably rest his head on John’s shoulder. “I don’t think I can ever stop wanting you.” His fingers ghosted circles over John’s heart. With a concerted effort, he tried to be as gentle as possible with his battered lover.

They sat in sweet silence as John burrowed his cheek into the top of Paul’s head.

“Really though, was it that scary? Seeing me like this? You didn’t even speak when the other lads were in.”

More tears were threatening to close Paul’s throat. He gripped John’s blanket. “I thought I was scared to see you. But I don’t think I was. I was scared of myself more, y’know?”

“Can’t say I do.”

Paul pulled the blanket up to his chin. “I was afraid of messing up. I just blanked when I saw you hurt like this. I’ve never- I just want to do... New things. New things are scary.”

John rubbed his shoulder blade, soothing him to loosen up on the blanket. “And look at us now! Crying like babies all over each other.” John’s had traveled down to Paul’s bicep. “Guess we were both scared.”

“God. This wasn’t even the scariest bit- not by far. Getting that damned phone call. Thought the world was falling out from underneath me.”

John was kneading at Paul’s skin. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I thought I was never going to see you again,” He confessed. “Soon as the car went off the ledge, I could only see you and Julian in my head.” His voice was gruff and strained, muffled by Paul’s hair.

“It feels unreal, almost. After all this. Both of us in this room. Both alive. Lennon and McCartney, the dream team- or whatever bullocks.”

Paul felt the rumble of laughter in John’s chest and more tears poured out of him. He glanced down and noticed he was soaking the thin fabric of the gown. He almost felt bad but suspected that John’s tears were dampening his hair. Fairtrade.

“Yeah. Whatever bullocks.”

They quieted for a brief moment before Paul adjusted himself to be closer to John. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

“No.” A kiss graced the top of his head. “Can’t feel much with these painkillers, really. Besides, my shoulder’s not my biggest issue.”

Paul hummed curiously. 

“Go this real groovy gash down my chest,” sarcasm dripped from his tongue as he coaxed Paul off his shoulder to pull up the neck of his gown. “Here.”

A trail of gauze led down his chest and to his stomach, which was completely wrapped with the stuff. Paul wiped away his tears and peered a little further down. His brow raised and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Aye. At least your willy made it out in full form.”

“Off it,” John dragged out the words like a warning, pressing the patterned fabric to his chest. “Horn dog.”

Paul only giggled, pressing his lips to John’s again. John sighed into it before guiding Paul’s head back to his shoulder, fingers running through his hair.

Betrayed by his own mind, Paul thought back to that meeting. I want a divorce. He pulled in a harsh breath. They had drifted that day, so far from one another. Building it back had been painstaking and soul crushing. “I’ll never let you lose me again.”

“Really, now?”

“Yes.” His tone was serious. “You’re not allowed. Whether or not we’re cross with each other, we won’t lose one another, alright?”

John hummed into his hair. “Sounds fine to me.”

[atomicblasphemy]

7 x 1

After the worse defeat in Banshees history, the players try to process the loss. And Boscha learns of her new responsibilities to the team.

“Okay guys, I know… Today didn’t… Go as planned. But we have to keep our heads held high right now, next season is around the corner and...”

Last time something like this happened people were burning Hexside jerseys and flags in the streets.

“Boscha...”

Last time something like this happened riots broke out through Bonesborough.

“Please… I know you’re the captain and all that, but...”

Last time something like this happened the Emperor himself had to step in, declare a state of emergency in the whole realm.

“Just shut up.”

And last time, years before any of the current players in the Banshees were even born, the humiliation was nowhere near what they experienced today. Semifinals, home-field. No, this hadn’t been mere humiliation, humiliation was what that Half-a-Witch and Amity – along with that… human – did to them that other day. This, this was tragedy. Epiderme’s team were not witches, they were machines, that’s the only explanation Boscha could come up with. And that didn’t convince her, not one bit.

Normally, Boscha wouldn’t stand for Skara’s insubordination. It would be bad enough it they weren’t wearing the Banshees’ uniform. Still at the end of the day she was her best friend, that granted her some privileges. Now, however, they were in their uniforms and Boscha was the captain. All fight had left her after Epiderme’s third goal, however. And what they heard and saw from the many fans wearing their blue and yellow colors didn’t help her to get some optimism back.

The four of them were alone in the dressing room, Skara’s voice lacking any sass, let alone alone her usual bubbliness. Off to the side, a few feet away, Cat tried to debatable success to console a still softly sobbing Amelia. “I only wanted to bring my people joy” the crying girl moaned over and over, in a lower volume every time. None of them could actually look at each other. None of them could start to point fingers and throw blame around, not yet at least.

Worse part was that should they have kept playing the way they did up to that fulminant counter-attack that resulted in Epiderme’s first goal they could have won. They dominated the first ten minutes or so of the game, barely giving any breathing room for their adversaries. Then the first goal came and whatever motivation, that old flame, they still harbored vanished. Their tactics broke down. But tactics was a generous way of putting it. Only a madman would have Skara in a starting position, and those were her own words in the locker room after each and every training session.

And it was the wrong moment for this sort of thing to happen to Hexside. The scandalous decision to have a human exchange student was just the tip of the iceberg. The school as a whole was ongoing a slump of sorts, under-performing in academic and sportive competitions alike. While once upon a time parents would enroll their children as soon as they knew they were expecting, Glandus and the other schools serving as something of a plan B, now Hexside was turning into this second echelon. Some, like Boscha herself, would place the blame on Bump’s somewhat erratic methods. His stubbornness in one hand, his weird pedagogic gambles on the other, and, of course, his rotten finger when it came to picking staff. Today’s tragedy was but a symptom of a more pervasive condition, that was her conclusion.

But Bump wasn’t the sole culprit here was he, Boscha? The time for pointing fingers arrived.

“Guys… I… We all are to blame here…”

Before continuing, the captain was cut off by the striker, the striker that for just the third time ever started a game in the bleachers. The one that was still trying to console the left fielder.

“Are we? Are we really though? I mean, four of seven goals came from your side of the field, the side you were the one supposed to be defending.”

Boscha’s mouth stopped in it’s tracks, she couldn’t refute her friend. Sure, she could throw her usual words to get her back to her place beneath her. But today wasn’t the day for something like that.

“Cat, back off a bit, will you? We all are feeling the same way, and it was the first time she played that position.”

“Come on Skara, you know I’m right. She is all talk before the game, but now she just won’t act like a captain. That’s a cap out.”

Skara, leaving out a tired sigh looked Cat in the eyes and, carefully, rebutted.

“Look, all I’m saying is that nothing good can come from this argument. Seriously. It wasn’t Boscha’s fault alone. Heck, we all really have a share of the blame.”

Cat just huffed. “Wish we got Willow instead”, she muttered under her breath.

“HEY!”

“DON’T HEY ME, BOSCHA!”

“YOU TAKE THAT BACK, RIGHT NOW!”

“NEVER!”

Amelia gingerly placed a hand on Cat’s shoulder. The girl’s anger seeming to seethe, she lifts both her hands, open, in front of her face. Looking down, avoiding the captain, she sits down.

They all sit there, silent, for a long time. Amelia’s sobs subsiding. Cat’s muscles relaxing as she calms herself down. Skara looking straight ahead, studying Boscha’s void expression.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to...”

Cat finally let out.

“Sure… Just don’t do that again.”

The mood around Hexside and the whole town, at least the part that rooted for Hexside, had been optimistic since the tournament started. It had been a while since the Banshees had this amount of support. It wasn’t because they had a particularly prodigious roaster. They were okay, but far from capable of overwhelming any qualified opponents. No, the reason for the optimism was simply due to that being the first time a single school was hosting all matches. A series of –  rather suspicious one might say - beast attacks prevented the other schools from hosting any events, the only option the league had was to have Hexside receive all the spotlights. It would be the first time in history Glandus and Epiderme would host Grom Night outside their premises, and together no less, as to be able to afford the venue’s rent.

And Bump took as much advantage of the roll of the dice as possible, it was the school’s first chance in years to shift their decaying image and more then a few conspiracy theories were floating around the hallways and streets. And if the spotlights were on Hexside, on the Banshees, then all that means was that they also were on Boscha, on the team’s glorious, spectacular, competent captain.

This had been the game with the most press coverage any of them ever played. The  stands were filled to the brim. The colors of blue and yellow taking over taking over the stands, the shouts of support bordering on overwhelming. Boscha was born for a day like this, her underlings were visibly anxious.  But not her, she knew the only possible was victory, confirmation of who she was. If the arena had been a chocolate box she’d devour it in one bite. And as any captain would, she tried to convey to the rest of the team what she was feeling. They could not mess this up for her, it was important that they remembered that, but it was also important that they remembered that the four of them combined were far superior than Epiderme’s team, despite them being on an undeniable winning streak and being traditionally one of the most competitive teams in all of Bonesborough or even the whole Isles, much like the Banshee’s themselves. Matches between those two were always neck to neck, often ending in draws with few scored goals, if any. The coach echoed Boscha’s position thoroughly, he was after all the one that led up to about a fifth of Hexside’s many titles. Him being the one on the side lines was maybe the main cause for optimism among fans, he came back from retirement just for this season after all. His professional image was on the line much like Boscha’s. Both were confident they managed to convey the importance of the game to the pale looking girls.

“Where’s coach, by the way?” Boscha asked, breaking the silence.

“Scolari? No idea.” Skara answered.

“Last time I saw him he was storming off, saying something about how the press kept on ganging up on him or whatever. Pretty sure he left before punches started flying.” Cat continued.

“Oh...”

Having calmed down, Amelia now browsed her scroll seeming oblivious to the others’ conversation.

Eleven minutes. A shock with Epiderme’s first goal, but that came with the nature of the game. All they had to do was to make a goal of their one and they would be back in equal footing, Boscha doing her best to ignore the many ways she could have avoided that score, Skara and Amelia looking lost but trying to muster on some determination. Twenty three minutes, the difference increases. Twenty four, Boscha fails again. Twenty six, they would need to put up the best performance in Banshees’ history to turn this into so much as a draw, the stands growing deafeningly silent, Boscha failed again. Twenty nine minutes, Boscha failed again, the other team looking ever so slightly less enthusiastic in their celebrations. This couldn’t be real.

As they left the field after the referee declared the end of the last half she saw, they all saw, the booing, crying, lost faces in the audience. That illusions track kid, one third of the human’s trio, clenching those flags to his chest hugging them like a baby while his father tried prying questions about their performance from Scolari. This all felt like a dream, Boscha was just not capable of failing this badly, she was just not capable of belief herself capable of this kind of failure. And she couldn’t wake up.

“Hey… They are making a live interview on Penstagram. Epiderme’s team, I mean.” Amelia finally said, seeming to get back into the conversation.

The other three just look at her, expectantly. Taking that as something of a confirmation she raises her scroll’s volume.

“… shocked too. We didn’t expect the game to go as it did. Hexside, the Banshees, they did so much for Grudgby. I mean, so many of their old players are personal heroes to anyone who loves this sport. So yeah, we didn’t want to humiliate them, we have a ton of respect for their team so during the break we all agreed to take a bit of a step back, you know, show proper respect to their history. We are proud of winning, but not of how we won. So we tried to keep our heads on the game and we were lucky enough to score twice more. Here’s to hoping they can manage to fix the problems they’re having right now. The sport deserves and needs the Banshees we’ve always known back. Now we gotta start thinking about who we might face in the finals. Both teams...”

Amelia turned her scroll off. They heard all they needed.

How kind of them.

The uncomfortable silence in the locker room only grew louder.

With the game undeniably settled by a seven neill score half way throw the second half the stands steadily grew more and more empty. Only a few of the fans still there to see Cat score their consolation goal after replacing Skara. They only managed to do something resembling sport again in the very last minute. Those few last fans alternating between boos and supportive chants about “Hexside pride”, but the cheers were so timid might as well not have happened at all. Boscha would take the former over the implicit pity of the ladder any time.

Before today, the Banshees were known as the best Grudgby team in Bonesborough’s history. Whether this title would now go to Epiderme or someone else Boscha didn’t know. But it was high time she made peace with the fact it wasn’t theirs anymore. That she was the captain during the team’s - no, the sports’ - greatest fiasco. But Boscha was stubborn, she still wouldn’t take this hit alone.

Before she could dwell further, Amelia asks a question that seemed to be burning on everyone else’s  minds.

“What now?”

“What you mean?” Boscha can’t turn to see her as she asks.

“Well, Boscha… You’re the captain… You are the one who decides. We have been talking though… Before the game, I mean. For a few days actually.” Skara, the second in command was the one to ask.

“I’ll figure something out… Wait, you’ve been talking? About what?”

“Yeah… Sorry about going behind your back… You just seemed so, I dunno, hyped. It was kinda cute and we really didn’t want to make you worry, but...”

“But we been kinda expecting something like this to happen actually. I mean, we wanted to believe your speeches... But yeah… So…”

Cat was the one to continue, every word both from her and Skara were deliberate. They had known each other for so long, was she really the type of friend that called for this type of carefulness when breaking bad news? Was this the kind of stuff that made the Blight leave their click? She shouldn’t be thinking about any of that, not right now.

“Okay then… Stop dancing around the issue and give it to me straight.”

“Well, that will be a bit hard” Amelia, showing some agency said to the curt nods of agreement from the other two. “But, I guess the main thing is the leadership style we’ve been having. Not you, not just you. But… coach was… tough, and pretty boneheaded… I mean, we all tried to convince him that Skara should not be a starting player, that she is our fastest player sure, but she hasn’t the endurance for the whole game, she can pull off counterattacks, so she should always enter later when the other guys are already too tired to keep up. I mean, that’s how we always played and it always worked well enough. But no. He wanted to use the same tactics as he used way back when. Anyway… I guess my point is I think, we all think he’s the first and foremost culprit. And well, I mean, I guess you didn’t really… help… But…” The desperate girl shoots pleading glances to both Cat and Skara.

“Look, all we are trying to say is: your leadership style is not exactly the best for a captain, and his is definitely not the best for a coach. We know it, you know it I guess, Bump knows it, the fans know it, literally everyone knows it. So… We figured a few changes need to be made.”

Cat, with a rather coy tone of voice, took the lead again. For whatever reason there always seemed to a silent agreement between the four of them that she should always be the one to break the bad news, especially when Boscha was to be the recipient. Like that one time when Amity had to cancel their sleepover. Even those outside their tight social circle seemed to acknowledge this, like that time when the professor had Cat be the one to announce to Boscha she was on the brink of failing her Into to Beast Keeping class. Despite Skara being her closest friend, Cat was the better one at disarming the captain.

Of course, in a time like this this only sounded ominous. But something else was bugging her.

“What you mean my leadership style?”

“Boscha, come one. I mean, seriously. Do you really think yelling ‘do this or that for me’, or ‘my legacy as a Grudgy player depends on you’...”

“Don’t forget  the classic ‘I swear to Titan guys, you can’t mess this up’.” Skara commented.

“Or ‘If we lose today because of you I’ll haunt all of you in your sleep. See you in your worst nightmares.’” Amelia added.

“Yeah… Do you really think any of that helps? As a captain, as someone that’s on the field with us?” Cat finally finished.

“Come on… You know I wasn’t being serious right? I can’t be that bad...”

As she watched her fellow Banshees trading wary glances with one another, Boscha just sat and waited. With none of them saying anything, she chose to get back to the main topic.

“In any case… What do you mean change?”

“Well… You see. Here’s the thing. This leadership style of yours… It isn’t entirely ineffective. Titan knows we wouldn’t have passed the quarter-finals without this… Rough nudge… And it actually is better than what coach has been giving us since day one. I mean, you both were always essentially saying the same things but at least with you we have a bit, at least a bit, of reason to actually care, a bit. Sooo… We were thinking… And we talked to Bump about this already… Again… Sorry for going behind your back on this one… He said it isn’t entirely impossible… But you kinda have to be the one giving the last say...”

“Can you please, for the love of the Titan, just say it already?”

“Boscha.” Uncharacteristic firmness in her voice, Skara called her friends name. “We want you as the Banshee’s next coach.”

“WHAT?”

“We want you as the Banshee’s next coach.” She repeated with the exact same voice tone, not even a semblance of wavering or stuttering.

“I heard that… But… Doesn’t the league forbids it?”

“It does… But there’s a loophole in the rules.”

“A loophole?”

“Yeah, it means the rule book wasn’t all that well written and that there are specific ways to interpret it so we can do something that would otherwise not be allowed.”

“I KNOW WHAT THE WORD MEANS… I just… What, pray tell, is this loophole?”

“Well… You see, according to Bump, all it says is that in order for someone to be a coach they need to be a part of the school’s staff, as in an employee of the school, pay check and all. It doesn’t say anywhere that they can’t also be a student at the school in question.” Cat took back hold of the conversation, sending shivers down Boscha’s spine.

“So… What are you saying is that I will become a teacher or something before graduating? How would that work? I also still to play, you know.”

“We’ll get to that last part eventually… Anyway… I said staff, not faculty. You wouldn’t get any classes, according to Bump… So… You know Kyle right? That old janitor that was working at Hexside even before our parents went there? He is needing a break, according to Bump. He just can’t handle full time work there anymore and… Well… Bump has been scrambling to find a suitable replacement.”

“...”

“You see… Kyle’s... specialty... is actually illusions. Now that I think about that kinda explains why so many of our classrooms smell like mold. But anyway… So… The best case scenario for Bump would be to hire someone more capable at potion making. You know, someone who could make and use appropriately all the cleaning potions… Aaannd. Well… That’s pretty much what you’d be doing?”

“Oh… Just that, huh? You say it like it’s ‘just’ that. Like it’s nothing. I have an image to keep, you know?”

“I know, I know… Look. It would be just a part time thing. Besides, you’d mostly just be cleaning the bathrooms. All you’d need to do is to put up a sign, shut the door, and no one would even know you’re there. And you’d be getting paid. Sure, not a lot but something. So yeah, Junior Janitor Assistant.”

“You know there’s no way I’ll agree to that, don’t you Cat?”

Skara stands up, slowly stepping closer to Boscha, her eyes never leaving the captain’s. She kneels down in front of her friend, her oldest friend. She places a place in the witch’s shoulder, squeezing it lightly.

“Boscha, I’m not happy to ask you this, the girls aren’t happy with it either. Heck, I think that if Bump was here he wouldn’t be happy about it either. But the truth of the matter is that we need you, Hexside needs you, the Banshees need you… to clean some very, very clogged toilets.”

“Why can’t one of you guys do that?”

“Because you are the leader. This should be obvious, Boscha. You are the leader and we follow you. But this time… This time for you to lead us… You’ll need to clean some extremely dirty toilets. And yes… This does include that one on the second floor that has been closed off for a couple of years for mysterious reasons. Bump was clear on that part.”

“This is a joke right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking, Boscha?”

Skara was right, all their faces revealed nothing but the utmost seriousness of their predicament. The kneeling girl continued.

“Either you do that or, and this is what Bump told us, we’ll have to ask Bob.”

“Bob?”

“Bob.”

“A Bob.”

“THE Bob.” The girl solemnly shock her head from side to side.

The madness in Skara’s words was impossible.

“Bob Bob?”

“Bob. Bob Bob.”

The room grew silent as the concept sunk into Boscha’s mind. After a long moment of disturbing quietude she finally mustered the much needed courage.

“No… No… We can’t have that.” A deep sigh, all her eyes looking even further defeated. “Fine… I’ll do it… But people can’t know about it, I swear. This is between me, you girls, and Bump.”

“And Kyle.”

“Yeah, sure. Kyle. No one else.”

“Promise.” They all said in unison. Amelia timidly complemented. “Thanks, Boscha. We can visit you during your shifts if you want.”

Deadpanned, Boscha responded.

“You guys just want to watch me humiliating myself, don’t you?”

“NONONONONO… No… No… Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous… No...”

“Sure… Sure…”

“And look.” Cat said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “Bump even said he can make it look as though you’re just doing office work. Anyway… You start on Tuesday and your shifts are on the afternoons.”

“Tuesday? Isn’t that the day the Human said she take over the kitchen and make us… what was it? Tacos? She seemed pretty pretty worried about the ingredients and how we’d… agree to them… whatever that means… Can’t I start literally any other day?”

“Nope… Bump was adamant - yes, Bump - it has to be on Tuesday. This Tuesday to be more specific. Yup, Tuesday you’ll start on your new job. And we’ll be there… Cheering you on. Yes, cheering.”

“Well...” A stoically empty façade on her face, Boscha continues. “Could be worse I guess… I don’t know how it could be worse, but yeah… Too bad I’ll have to stop playing though… I’ll miss it.”

Skara, a small and sincere grin forming on her lips.

“Not necessarily… The rule book doesn’t say anything about the coach also playing either.”

“REALLY?”

Finally some good news came Boscha’s way. She couldn’t find it in her to contain the sudden burst of excitement.

“Yeah, really.” Skara continued. “But…”

“There’s a caveat, should be obvious really. Have you ever coached anything before Boscha? It isn’t the same as being captain. You’d need some time learning to do it, not to mention all the adjustments you’ll need to make in our training plans, tactics, and so on… So… You’d eventually be able to carry on both role, but not right from the go… In the mean time you’ll need to find someone who can replace you… Temporarily, of course.” Said Cat.

“Oh no… Nonononono. Don’t you even think about suggesting that. I know where this is going and NO. Absolutely not.”

“Boscha… You know well enough who is the person in all of Hexside that’s most suited for the job.”

“No, that’s going too far. I am not asking her, anyone else. Even the human.”

“Boscha… You need to give up on your pride. You need to ask Willow to join our team. To join us. It is the only way. Together, all of us will make a team that will conquer all adversaries.”

“No. That’s impossible. I’ll never do that.”

“Look into your heart, Boscha. You know this is the only way.”

“Nooooo...” She whimpered… This was her least favorite part of today. So far at least.

But it was a losing battle and she stood alone.

“Fine… I’ll do it.. I’ll ask the Half-a-Witch to join the team...”

“Willow.”

“What?” Boscha growled. Low, menacingly.

“You’re not asking the Half-a-Witch to join the team.” Cat stated matter of factly, defiantly even. “You are asking Willow. Boscha… It’ll be a negotiation. You’ll to need convince her to join us, to flex all of your… charisma… on her. You can’t do that if just go around insulting her all the time.”

“But… Come on, I get why I need to be the coach instead of any of you. But why this? Why do I have to be the one to this.”

The answer came immediately.

“Because you’re pretty much the main reason why she’d refuse.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement as clear as day.

“I… Fair enough… Fair enough. You know what? I’m the captain in the worst defeat in Banshees history, my reputation is probably all gone, and today I also learned I’ll have to clean toilets on a daily basis. What is another loss compared to all this. I can do this. I can do this… I… I can do this. I mean, even I can admit I don’t have much face left to save. So yeah, let’s just get this over with then. I’m gonna shoot her. A TEXT. I’m gonna shoot her a text, Titan danmit you don’t need to look at me like that. Anyway, does anyone have her number?”

“Sure” Came all three voices, Skara and Cat reaching for their scrolls.

“Seriously, all of you? I can understand Amelia, but you two as well? You know what, you know what? I don’t care. Nope, I don’t care at all. I’m serene, beautiful, powerful young witch that doesn’t care about stuff like that anymore.”

“Don’t you think you should, I don’t know, do this in person?” Skara ignores Boscha’s remark.

“I will. Just gotta set up a meeting with her or whatever, get off my back.”

“Sure… Look, we’re here to help, you don’t need to get all snappy like that.”

“Skara, I swear to Titan… Just give me her number already.”

She, with her lovely lovely friends’ assistance, manages to write a short, to the point, message to the Half-a… Willow. She messaged Willow. It was a polite, some might even call elegant, thing. She didn’t dwell on it, not on the text, all of the girls were insistent on that being something she’d have to do when face-to-face with Willow, but she tried to convey some degree of repentance over her previous treatment of the girl. Her hopes of it being effective were slim to non-existent.

All done, she remains sat on the bench. She remains there for a long while, the silence returning to the dressing room as the other, concerned, members of the Banshees watched her, waiting for her next move. Head downcast, jaw clenched tight, rubbing her closed middle eye with a couple fingers she tries to process the day. Finally, through gritted teeth, she lets out.

“Guys… I hate you… I hate each and every one of you.”

Had Boscha been looking at them she would have seen their relieved smiles, or maybe even the quick wink Cat shot Skara, who nodded in response before answering the former captain.

“We love you too, Boscha. Now. Come on, lets get out of here. We still have to face the music.”

“Titan...” Boscha said, standing up. “I almost forgot about that… I guess we have no choice, do we?”

“Nope, not at all.”

“Lets get this over with then.”

As they left the dressing room together, as a team, Boscha felt the scroll in her back pocket vibrating. She grumbled at the thought of her future. “For the Banshees”, she thought, less than enthusiastically.

[wellimhavinga3outof10day]

Lost Lullabies - Chapter Nineteen

Description: Mickey Milkovich, former child star turned action movie star, runs into his old co-star, Ian Gallagher, out on the street in the middle of a winter night. When Mickey takes him in, he doesn’t realize that Ian has the power to completely turn his new life upside down.

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Read on AO3

Mickey woke up the next day in his own bed without Ian. He had barely spoken to Ian since their semi-fight in his dressing room. He didn’t know what to say to him. Ian wasn’t mad at him, wasn’t even really disappointed, he’d just seemed... upset. And Mickey had no idea how to make him feel better without giving up everything he’d done with his life. Mickey loved Ian. He loved him a lot. But he didn’t love him more than his career, his success, his life outside of the Southside, who he was without the ghetto surrounding him.

           Mickey reached for his phone, intent on calling or texting Ian to see how he was doing before he got to set. Instead, he got a screen full of notifications and bile in his throat. He noticed Ian had already texted him: Pictures just hit the web. Be safe <3 Mickey felt tears prick his eyes and he wiped them away. With shaking hands, he opened his other messages.

           He had two dozen texts and emails from Liz. Reminders about the press conference they’d scheduled to deal with the repercussions as fast as possible and well wishes. Svet had texted six times. Twice just going over the details of their plan – she was to toe the party line, refuse to give up that their relationship was fake, and avoid saying too much in case it conflicted with Mickey’s statement. In return, Mickey would double his appearances with her and get her a part in the new James Bond movie at his side . The other four messages from her were a mix of words of wisdom and heartfelt pleas for him to be okay.

           Everything else was social media notifications. Mickey opened Twitter and was bombarded with magazines asking for him to comment on the pictures, “fans” calling him all kinds of names, and people telling him they’d stopped following his account. He checked his follower number. Down three million overnight.

           Mickey turned his phone off. Slipping out of bed, he dressed in his best avoid-the-paparazzi clothing. He wore his black hoodie, his worst jeans, and dark sunglasses. Then he went out the back way, hoping to avoid the press camped out front.

           Of course, he’d lived in the building long enough that the press knew about the back exit. Mickey ended up with his head down pushing through a crowd of cameras to get out of the small alley. They were all yelling at him but he couldn’t make out much. He hopped into the car waiting for him and forced himself to breathe while it raced down the street.

           “Are you all right, Mr. Milkovich?”

           Mickey looked up into the rear-view mirror to find the driver watching him. The guy had worked for him for a couple of years now but Mickey had never gotten his name. “Just fine,” Mickey said. Then, because of the panic building inside him, he asked, “Have you ever been offered a bribe to... I don’t know, give away my secrets or take me somewhere against my will?”

           The driver laughed. “Mr. Milkovich, I can assure you, you pay me much more than any tabloid ever could.”

           Mickey nodded and willed those words to comfort him. They didn’t. It’s not like the driver could really do much at this point – the photos were already out there. Mickey itched to look at his phone again or at least turn it on, but he knew it was better this way. He had the press conference set up. He only had to get through the morning and at lunch he would put all the rumours to rest.

           The moment Mickey walked onto set he felt the mood change. Ian had come on his own, figuring stopping to pick him up today probably wouldn’t be the best idea, and Mickey immediately wished he hadn’t. If Ian was standing beside him, Mickey thought maybe he’d have been able to take on the world. But as it was, even on a closed set with most of his face covered, Mickey felt exposed like a nerve.

           He forced himself to move through the quiet gawkers. No one openly stared, just stole quick glances and whispered as he passed. Mickey prayed to a god he didn’t believe in to smite him so he wouldn’t have to last the morning with these people. He wondered if he could get away with offering his statement here first, dispelling the rumours on set before anywhere else, but more likely than not, some gopher would record it on their phone and it would go viral hours before the press conference. And Mickey needed more coverage than that if he was going to keep his career.

           Mickey didn’t see Ian until they wound up on set together. Ian said nothing, just shot Mickey a glance that could have meant any of a dozen things. Mickey simply nodded, hoped that was answer enough.

           The director waltzed onto the set a few minutes later. Upon seeing them, he spread his arms wide and placed a devastatingly snake-like smile on his lips. “My boys,” he said, voice dripping in honey and sarcasm, “What have I done, what could I have done, to deserve such a great present from the universe? Undeniable proof that the two of you are fucking. It’s beautiful. It’s iconic. It’s honestly the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.”

           He clapped a hand on each of their cheeks. “Just look at you two. Trying to keep this from me like some sort of secret when I knew all along. Hell, I knew nine years ago when you two were barely fetuses! Oh, to have the world fall at my feet and redeem me! I’ve never been happier. I’ve never known happiness this great.”

           Mickey’s hands curled into fists.

           The director turned his way, his smile twisting into something sinister. “And you. Oh, people kept telling me that Mickey Milkovich, the James Bond of his generation, the ladies man, boyfriend of Svetlana Petrov, could not possibly be gay. How could he be? When we have all those uncomfortable sex scenes of him with women? Oh, no, Mickey Milkovich is no fag. No fag at all. And then this morning” – he laughed – “every magazine in town has a picture of you kissing none other than out and proud Ian fucking Gallagher.” He started to clap, nice and slow.

           Mickey shot Ian a look.

           Ian shrugged. “Go ahead.”

           Mickey decked the director. He stumbled back, blood on his lips and dripping over his smile. Mickey hit him again, felt something break beneath his knuckles. When the director fell, he dropped on top of him and kept punching him while the man laughed and laughed and laughed. He didn’t stop until he felt someone pulling him back, then he went willingly, hands in the air like a surrender. The security guard let go of him as soon as he was sure Mickey was done.

           “That was stupid,” Ian said.

           “You didn’t stop me.”

           “If I had, I’d’ve done it myself. And we both know you have more currency here.”

           Mickey snorted, the slightest of smiles on his face as he watched security pull the director to his feet. The man still had a manic smile on his face but at least it was properly bloodied and bruised. His nose had shifted to one side and a couple of his teeth were cracked or missing. Mickey allowed his smile to widen.

           A producer cleared her throat. Both Ian and Mickey looked her way. Without any expression, she said, “We’re not going to be able to shoot for a couple of hours at the least. And that’s only if he doesn’t press charges. I suggest you two go to your dressing rooms to wait.”

           Mickey gave her a wicked smile, liked the way she flinched. He really had missed being someone people were afraid of. As soon as she was gone, they took her advice and disappeared into Mickey’s dressing room. Ian sat him down, found a first-aid kit, and started to bandage his bloody knuckles.

           “You know,” Ian said, “if that gets out, it’s not going to back the ‘it was a joke’ story very well.”

           “I’ve wanted to punch that guy since day one. Everyone knows it.”

           “I guess.”

           “Hey.” Mickey tilted Ian’s chin up with his good hand and looked him in the eyes. “This isn’t about you, remember? If we lived in a different world, hell, if I was a different person, I’d come out for you in an instant.”

           “I know.” Ian kissed him, backed up just enough to lean their foreheads together. “I’m just sorry this is happening.”

           “Not your fault. I kissed you.”

           “I got you drunk. Let you convince me to walk back to the hotel. Did nothing to stop you. Even egged you on by telling you your father died.”

           Mickey laughed. He pressed another kiss to Ian’s lips, liking the way his smile felt against his face. He wrinkled up his nose against Ian’s. “We’re gonna get through this just fine. Trust me on that, okay?”

           “I’d trust you with my life.”

           Mickey hummed in pleasure, stole one last kiss, and then let Ian get back to bandaging his hand. It didn’t take too much longer so they spent most of the morning curled together on that couch, semi-waiting for the director to come back but mostly waiting for noon. When the hands of the clock hit twelve, Ian sighed and Mickey got to his feet.

           “I’ll see you soon,” Mickey said. He kissed Ian hard. “No matter what I say out there, I love you, okay?”

           “I love you too.”

           Mickey tried not to hear the fear, the slight loathing, in Ian’s voice. He forced a smile before he turned to the door and walked out. No one whispered when he passed now, too scared of what he’d do. He left set, jumped in his car, and stayed silent the whole way to the press conference.

           Liz had set it up on the top of some office building that supposedly sponsored him. Not that he knew their name or what they sold or even what he’d done to help them. He did too many commercials a year to really know anything about what he endorsed. He rode the elevator to the roof, glad that whatever company this was, they had a very tall building and a smooth elevator that calmed his nerves.

           Liz met him at the elevator doors, handed him a copy of his statement, and started talking. Most of it went in one ear and out the other. Mickey nodded at all the right points – years of this shit had taught him how to look like he was listening to Liz – and smiled when she finished with her usual pep talk. He stopped before stepping up onto the makeshift stage, looked out at the crowd of reporters waiting for him. He wondered what they had been told about what he was going to say. He wondered how many of them would believe him.

           After Liz finished with her speech about what could and couldn’t be asked of him, she invited him to the stage. Mickey climbed the steps and took his spot at the podium without once looking out at the press. Then, forcing a big smile, he looked up to the camera flashes. He breathed through it and held up a hand to silence them.

           “Thank you all for being here today,” Mickey said, his voice too loud in the microphone. “I’m glad to see that so many of you came. As you know, this morning a picture of me and Ian Gallagher kissing hit the press.”

           A clatter of noise and camera flashes interrupted him. He looked down at his speech until they quieted down.

           “I have prepared a statement to address the rumours about me and Ian.” Mickey swallowed hard. “As you can see in the picture, we’re kissing under mistletoe. It is a well-known tradition that any two people under mistletoe must kiss. That’s what this kiss was. Two friends following a tradition.”

           He tasted bile in his mouth. “Ian has been out since we first worked together in Boy Babysitters almost ten years ago. I have remained his friend and colleague ever since. The night of this kiss, we were drunk and walking home and I caught sight of some mistletoe above us when we stumbled into a wall. I thought it might be...” Mickey trailed off. He tried to force the word funny from his throat but he couldn’t.

           He took a long moment, too long. The press started to chatter, to shout questions, to take pictures. Mickey stared unseeing at the statement in front of him, swallowed the bad taste in his mouth. He held up a hand for silence and slowly the noise died down.

           “I’m sorry,” Mickey said. “I’m sorry. This statement was written for me by my publicist. I gave her the idea for it after Ian told me that it would be the perfect excuse for my actions. But it’s not true.”

           He stared out at the reporters, waiting for them to work themselves into a frenzy, but they stayed quiet. Something like hope burst warm and fuzzy in his chest. “I kissed Ian that night because I’ve spent the last ten years, maybe longer, trying not to kiss him. I kissed Ian Gallagher because I’m in love with him and I always have been.”

           Mickey bit his lip. “I’m gay.”

           That was when the press exploded. Reporters jumped from their seats to get closer to the stage, questions were shouted at him, and the cameras exploded. Mickey tried to blink past the flashes but he couldn’t see a thing.

           The next thing he knew, Liz had grabbed him and security was ushering the two of them back towards the elevator. The doors closed on them and Liz pulled the emergency stop. “Well. That went terribly.”

           Mickey laughed. He couldn’t stop laughing.

           “This isn’t funny. You have no idea the mess you just made.”

           “Isn’t that your job though?” Mickey said. “To clean up my messes?”

           Liz shook her head. “I don’t know what you want me to do about that, Mick.”

           “Nothing,” Mickey said honestly. “I want you to do absolutely nothing.”

<<Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty>>

[truereviewpage]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

light fixture / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar sofa / similar curtains / curtain rods

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out the rug in here for this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander (this is the one we have).

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

light / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar curtains / curtain rods / TV stand / similar chair

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

bookcase / similar pink pillow / similar blue pillow / white faux wood window blinds 

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

Also! If you have any where-did-you-get-that questions about the beach house (or paint color questions, which we also get a lot) this page has all the answers for you.

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

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The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top published first on https://aireloomreview.tumblr.com/

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Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

light fixture / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar sofa / similar curtains / curtain rods

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out the rug in here for this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander (this is the one we have).

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

light / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar curtains / curtain rods / TV stand / similar chair

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

bookcase / similar pink pillow / similar blue pillow / white faux wood window blinds 

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

Also! If you have any where-did-you-get-that questions about the beach house (or paint color questions, which we also get a lot) this page has all the answers for you.

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top published first on https://ssmattress.tumblr.com/

[endlessarchite]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

light fixture / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar sofa / similar curtains / curtain rods

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out the rug in here for this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander (this is the one we have).

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

light / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar curtains / curtain rods / TV stand / similar chair

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

bookcase / similar pink pillow / similar blue pillow / white faux wood window blinds 

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

Also! If you have any where-did-you-get-that questions about the beach house (or paint color questions, which we also get a lot) this page has all the answers for you.

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top published first on https://bakerskitchenslimited.tumblr.com/

[additionallysad]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top https://ift.tt/2IzVEdg

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out the rug in here for this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander (this is the one we have).

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

[lukerhill]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out the rug in here for this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander (this is the one we have).

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

[vincentbnaughton]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out the rug in here for this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander (this is the one we have).

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

[billydmacklin]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander.

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/

[interiorstarweb]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander.

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top published first on https://novaformmattressreview.tumblr.com/

[lowmaticnews]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out the rug in here for this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander (this is the one we have).

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top published first on https://landscapingmates.blogspot.com

[statusreview]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

light fixture / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar sofa / similar curtains / curtain rods

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out the rug in here for this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander (this is the one we have).

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

light / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar curtains / curtain rods / TV stand / similar chair

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

bookcase / similar pink pillow / similar blue pillow / white faux wood window blinds 

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

Also! If you have any where-did-you-get-that questions about the beach house (or paint color questions, which we also get a lot) this page has all the answers for you.

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top published first on https://ssmattress.tumblr.com/

[statusreview]

Making A Concrete Coffee Table Top

Hey, good news! I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would state this good news: we finally have a coffee table!

And it was a DIY that was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the high end alternative, so three cheers for that. Oh and people who follow our InstaStories know we’ve switched out this rug since taking these pics, so there will be a post all about that (and the other dining room tweak we’ve made) coming up in a week or two. But back to the coffee table.

We’ve actually had the table base for a while, but it’s been completely topless for months. We scored this wooden octagonal table base from a neighbor who had planned on adding a top to it at some point, but after months of doing nothing with it she put it on our neighborhood buy/sell board for a whopping $7. After paying 700 pretty pennies for it, it remained topless in our garage for several months before moving to the beach house last fall (see below)… where it remained – still topless – until last month.

Our grand scheme was to get a stone top custom cut for it. Marble would look great, but we also considered more durable options like quartz. But quotes from two different stone yards – even for remnant pieces – came back between $700 – $900. I KNOW. They were MUCH higher than we expected, partially because of the size (it’s 38″ at its widest, which makes it deeper than a standard countertop by a fair amount) and the octagonal shape.

So we quickly shifted from “buying a stone top for it” to “DIYing a stone-like top for it” – and after weighing all sorts of solutions (faux stone laminate, a wood top we painted white or even tried to “marble”, etc) we landed a white concrete top that would give us a nice chunky stone look, but at a much cheaper cost. Unfortunately, the project kept getting nudged behind bigger tasks like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds. Hence why I was forced to uncomfortably prop my feet up on this edge of this puppy each time we visited. Feel bad for me, please.

We feared that a solid poured concrete slab would (a) be very heavy and (2) be very prone to cracking or breaking – especially without adding lots of extra support under the table top. Plus little kid heads + a solid hunk of concrete sounded worrisome. So instead we decided to create a wood top and then cover the wood with Ardex Feather Finish, which is a thin concrete material that we used years ago to give our laminate kitchen counters the appearance of solid concrete.

Making The Wood Coffee Table Top

We picked up a 4 x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood because we wanted something sturdy enough to span the tabletop without sagging. To mark my cuts, I simply flipped the table over on top of the plywood and traced the edges with a pen. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how I made it overhang the table’s edge in a moment.

Using my circular saw outside, I trimmed off the edges to get an octagon that perfectly fit the top of our table base. No overhang. Yet.

Next I cut 8 pieces of 1 x 2″ whitewood to create a border around my cut plywood. After summoning some of my 8th-grade geometry, I determined that I needed to cut each one at a 22.5-degree angle to fit them around the octagon. But surprise-surprise, my miter saw was one step ahead of me and already had that as a preset angle.

Then, with the plywood laid on top of the base with the edges flush, I started nailing each of my 1 x 2″ pieces around the edges (into the plywood, not the table base). I put wood glue on it before I nailed, which help things hold for the long haul. Adding this border did a few helpful things:

It made the wood top slightly larger than the base, giving it a nice overhang

It made the wood top look twice as thick as it really is, without adding much more weight to it

It helped keep the top in place by making it almost like a snug shoebox top. I still screwed it to the base from underneath just to be safe.

Once it was all nailed in, I used wood putty to fill in all of my gaps and nail holes. This probably wasn’t a super critical step (I was going to coat this with a skim coat of concrete, after all) but I discovered the table isn’t a perfect octagon, so some of my corners weren’t as tight as I’d hoped. This shot is from before I sanded the excess wood filler off:

Applying The Concrete Finish

We haven’t used Ardex Feather Finish since our first project with it: our old kitchen’s laminate counters (here’s the tutorial for applying it and then sealing them to be food safe). While we decided the application was awesome for a quick makeover, they did get a little oil-stained around the stove since we used food-safe sealer as opposed to some of the more heavier duty sealers. No worries, we just added a cutting board to cover the small splatters – and we loved the imperfections and movement that was created in the application process. Definitely a whole lot better than the old plastic-y counters the house came with. Overall: we’d definitely recommend this method for a kitchen counter update – especially if you use a stronger sealer.

For the coffee table we decided to use the white Ardex instead of the standard gray color, so we tracked down a 10 pound bag online for $40. The dry Ardex mix just combines with water, so to apply it all you really need are some mixing/measuring buckets and various sized trowels to apply and smooth it. Oh, and sandpaper and a power sander.

The bag suggested a 2 to 1 mix of Ardex powder to water, but I read our old post and reminded myself that I had liked a bit more water than that – it helped keep the mix looser and easier to spread. So I started by measuring one small batch at a time (I think I needed about twice this much to complete one coat).

I mixed them together using a small trowel, making sure to getting any remaining powder mixed in. I aimed for a thick pancake batter consistency – like it would sorta hold to my trowel for a moment before dripping off on its own.

Then I just scooped everything onto my table and started spreading it smooth, using larger trowels on the top and smaller ones on the edges. Note: whatever surface you’re doing this on should be sanded enough to be rough. Our plywood was already slightly textured, so I could skip this step, but if you’re doing it on the top of a piece of furniture, be sure to take a pass with low-grit sandpaper first (like 60-80 grit).

Ardex takes more than one coat (we did two this time) so my first pass was really about coverage, not smoothness. I was worried about sanding too much off during the next step, especially on the edges and corners, so I threw caution to the wind and really laid it on thick around the edge.

I gave it several hours to dry and then came back to start smoothing. The first thing I did (and my favorite part) was to use a putty knife to scrape all of the stalactites that dripped down the bottom edge. It was so satisfying and it gave us a really clean edge on the bottom.

Then I took some low-grit sandpaper (80) and went to town on the rest of the top with my palm sander. Since I knew another coat was coming after this one, I wasn’t concerned about getting it flawlessly smooth. I mostly wanted to eliminate any hard ridges that would catch clumps of Ardex during my next application.

This is what the top looked like after I sanded the first coat. Obviously, you can see lots of my trowel marks as well as little pockets where the Ardex didn’t spread completely smoothly. It’s a bit rougher than we wanted for the final product, but it was fine for a first coat.

The second coat went on in pretty much the exact same method – except I did mix the Ardex a bit thinner and I took a bit more care getting a smoother application since this would be the top one that’s seen by everyone. Plus, when I sanded it, I moved from my initial low-grit (80) sandpaper down to 120 then 220, so that the finished table was super smooth. I didn’t remember to snap any photos of the coffee table after we sanded the second coat, but took lots of them once it was sealed and finished, so if we skip ahead for a second, here’s the finished result:

Sealing The Concrete

There are lots of products out there for sealing concrete. As I mentioned, we used food safe eco-sealer on our kitchen counters, which we think might be the reason tiny little grease spatters sunk in next to the stove – but since we’re not planning to prepare food on this table, we went with something heavier duty for a nice super-durable finish this time. Our final choice? This “Wet-Look” Sealer by Behr. Sherry suggested something high-gloss, which would really mimic that glossy stone look, and we were both really happy with how it turned out. Almost a mirror-like shine – which you can sort of see in the photo above.

I just used a small foam roller to apply a thin coat along the top and all of the sides. Once it had dried for a few hours, we did a second coat (and later a third coat, just to be safe). I barely made a dent in the 1 gallon container (it was the smallest one they sold) but at least I have some on hand to do a touch-up sealing coat every year or two, just to be safe.

Once it was all fully dry, we brought it in and let it cure for a week before putting any objects on it (not that it needs that long – we just weren’t at the beach house for a week). And BOY DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO HAVE A COFFEE TABLE!

The white top breaks up the darker rug and couch nicely, and also helps tie together some of the other bright white accents like the bookshelf and the curtains.

It’s hard to tell from these photos, but although the concrete is super glossy and chunky, it still has imperfections, which is definitely part of the charm. Instead of looking like a big block of shiny plastic, it gives off that raw concrete vibe – even in the glossy white color. This next picture probably best shows a few light trowel marks. It all feels smooth to the touch, but when you look closely they’re definitely there. Again, this is some of the “interest” that we expected from the Ardex process (or at least my version of it – ha!) and for us it takes the place of the movement we would’ve gotten from a stone like marble.

Sherry and I have also discussed everything from staining the wood base a little bit darker (especially to disguise the light edges) to painting the while base a glossy white to emphasize the interesting shape of the legs. But for now I’ve argued that we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having a place to actually kick up our feet. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

And don’t even get me started on the other furniture adjustments we’re thinking about in this room. Actually since we took these photos we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs for that wall on the right, so there’s a lot more comfy seating in here now (although we’re thinking about a few other adjustments before calling it done). But that’s a topic for another day!

P.S. Do you get our free weekly emails? We love sending bonus details, design tips, random style thoughts, and other house-related stuff. Click here to get them delivered right to your inbox. And thanks to everyone who is on the list already – Sherry loves putting them together for you each week. 

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