Polished concrete table

[david s]

Having a table propped up with bricks beside my oven for the past 19 years, my wife decided she wanted a polished concrete table. Having done several polished concrete oven arches and purchased long ago a small polishing machine, I was keen to tackle it. I'll let the pics tell the story.

[david s]

Sorry the forum only allows 5 pics per post. (A tip I use to resize pics when the forum says they're too big is to email them to myself and the email automatically downsizes them so you can then post them from there to the forum.)
I quickly found that while my small polishing machine is ok for small jobs, like decorative arches, it isn't so hot for larger jobs like this. As it is a
basically a 4"angle grinder with variable speed control, a watered in the centre of the axle and a decent electrical cut-out switch, It tends to dig in a bit making keeping the surface flat very difficult. I hired (at ridiculous expense) a bigger machine for the first course #50 cut. The machine did not have a water feed, but instead cuts dry with an industrial vacuum to collect the dust. This proved a far better set up than my machine which make a hell of a mess. The operation only took a couple of hours and I then progressed to the finer polishing with my smaller, wetter and messier set up. It has diamond pads from 40 right down to 1600 that velcro fit onto the head for easy changing.

I finished today with the first coat of sealer. I'll give it a few more, but it's pretty much finished.

[Lotus19]

Looks great, David! I was planning to do the same thing for my side table, but I think I'm going to find a nice slab of live edge wood (or do the faux live edge technique). The thought of mixing more cement makes my head hurt.

[david s]

If you look carefully, in the second last pic, you can see my neighbour's oven's China hat on the other side of the wall.