The Moment You have ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!

(Drum roll please....)
TA DAH! The hearth in place but requiring grout in the joints.

(Drum roll again....)
TA TA TA DAH! The counter top in place but requiring the sink and faucet to be installed.



For those of you who are REALLY interested, the close ups.





Now, we are so happy with the way this came out and I am going to be making a backsplash for it in a week or so.

If I were to do it over again, I would have thrown more glass in because much of it didn't appear in the final result and is probably sitting just below the surface. I would also use flat pieces of glass instead of curved pieces that are produced when you smash a vase or a tumbler. Now, in case you are wondering, you can buy recycled colored glass in bulk for countertops. The price was about $65.00 for a 50 lb. bag with a minimum order of $150.00. I didn't need that much glass so I chose the "cheapass" route! The other tip I have is this; have a spare set of diamond polishing pads on hand if you plan to do a lot of work. My first set of pads wore out and so I had to pull out my spare set. If you don't have a spare set it is not likely you will have them in time to do your work before it becomes too hard to grind. So plan ahead. A set of pads will cost about $100.00 on Ebay. So the actual cost of this concrete work was about $115.00 since I had the melamine for the mold left over from the kitchen counter pour and the tools, etc.

You know, making and polishing rock 20+ years after graduating from college I can finally say that I AM doing something with my Geology Degree!