My pizza oven has given me a great new outdoor kitchen space but I've got nowhere to prepare
anything.
So I'm going to make a wooden concrete kitchen island to solve all my problems.
These are the tools and materials required to make a wooden and concrete kitchen island.
It will be a fantastic feature in your kitchen and it is essentially made up of two components.
You have the concrete slab top and the wooden base.
You can get all of your timber base pre-cut at your local Bunnings store.
The only thing you'll have to do yourself is a couple of miter joints.
This is the Formply required to make the mold for the concrete slab top.
This is my base piece and this piece I'm gonna use to rip for the sides.
Don't forget to set the guard on your circular saw, that way you'll get a nice straight cut
all the way through.
I've now ripped the links.
To do the sides, the easiest thing to do is just make sure one edge is flush and then
just mark the other with some pencil.
Now that I've got my four sides cut, I need to pre-drill and fix them together.
I'm gonna give these concrete slab a little bit of finesse by using this tri-quad.
I'll pop it in here like so and what that does is just give it a bit of a nicer edge.
You can do this as well or you can leave it with a square edge.
Because I don't want my slab to have any sharp corner edges, I'm gonna insert some tri-quad
into there as well.
Once you've got it fixed in, you can cut off the excess from the top.
Because this is going to be the mold, you don't have to worry about it looking pretty.
Now that the mold is complete, I need to take it outside and pour in the concrete.
You need to spray the mold with a Silicone-based lubricant so the concrete doesn't adhere to
the mold itself.
You need Reo Mesh to make sure the concrete stays nice and strong.
I've already inserted mine.
I've centralized it within the actual mold itself, but you need to make sure it's suspended
because you don't want it appearing at the top of your slab.
To do this, I've used some Reo bar to help keep it suspended.
Before even starting to make your concrete mix, make sure your mold is nice, level, and
flush.
For the concrete slab, I'm using four bags of ready-mix concrete and half a bag of general
purpose cement.
I'm also going to be adding some BondCrete into the water mixture to give it that added
strength.
Once your mixture is ready, you need to shovel it into the mold, start to level it off by
using a trowel and make sure you tap around all the edges to remove any air bubbles.
While the slab is setting, I'm gonna start on the wooden base.
To begin with, we're gonna do the top outer frame which requires miter joints on each
corner, and it's basically a large rectangular picture frame.
So set your saw to the first 45-degree miter, cut off the end, and then do your measurement
to make sure you've got the right length, and then do you next miter cut.
I now have the basic outer frame ready to be put together.
So I'm just gonna use a fixing gun just to secure it and hold it in place before pre-drilling
and screwing it together.
So I have my two Mulberry legs.
I'm going to place a piece of bracing across the top and also some at the bottom for my
bottom shelf.
To make sure the bottom's evenly spaced, I'm just gonna use a scrap bit of Mulberry timber
that I have here as a spacer.
I'll measure it to make sure it's nice and squared.
Otherwise, when you put it on the floor, it's gonna be all wonky, and you really don't want
that.
It's always a great idea to do pilot holes especially with the timber like Mulberry because
it is so hard.
You don't want the screw to split your post.
So once I've made my second pair of legs, I'm gonna fit all four of them into the top
of the frame.
Position the legs in the frame, making sure they're nice and square.
Once that's done, countersink, pre-drill, and fix them in.
I'm about to make a bottom shelf.
Not only does it help add stability for the weight of the concrete slab to go on top,
but you can put anything you like underneath on it.
As with the top, I'm gonna repeat the same process to put the shelf together as well.
Now, I need to put the shelf frame onto the actual legs.
To secure the slats, I'm just gonna use the 16 nail to hold them in place so then I can
countersink, pre-drill, and screw them down.
I'm gonna use this piece of timber so I can evenly space my slats.
As you can see, concreting waits for no one that's why I'm screeding and edging under
these lights because I need to leave it overnight to dry.
The concrete slab will be really heavy so make sure you definitely have some people
around to help.
I'm going for a really robust industrial look so I only need to give this top a light sand.
But if you're up to something a bit more polished or refined, you'll need to give it even more
sanding or use a grinder.
How fantastic does this look?
It can be used indoors or outdoors.
I'm gonna place this outdoors near my pizza oven.
It's so robust it will last years.
This wooden concrete kitchen island is fantastic.
The concrete slab has a really nice earthy tone about it and it's super tough and industrial.
By allowing that extra little bit of effort by putting in the quad, you can see it's giving
it a really nice edge and finish.
Do you remember how empty this courtyard space was?
How great does it look now with this wooden concrete bench as well as my pizza oven?
Both of them combined together make for a fantastic outdoor feature.