How to Build a Polished Concrete Desk

Step 9 Assemble

Assemble the desk with bolts to hold the pieces together. set the concrete carefully on top, and add any drawer pulls, power strips, or other things to finish it off. Use zip ties to route wires.
Forthcoming Additions: diy light box build to light up fiber ends in different colors and patterns! also: pictures with less wire clutter visible.

Comments

[sarliaee]

Windows 7 was my idea. Concrete Desk was yours. Congratulations. Beautiful job!

[will1947]

 So you're to blame for Windows 7.  Widows 7 convinced me to give up and switch to Mac. LOL

[WhiteTigerTails]

And Mac convinced me to quit and switch to Vista Ultimate.

[hintss]

then that convinced me to switch to linux since that broke. I post a video sometime. remind me. basically, going to the grub menu, then choosing windows, it says "Loading Windows Vista" along with a progress bar, then when it finishes, the screen turns black and it sits there. I've let it sit for an hour before.

[archion]

And the combination of frustrations from Linux, MAC, and Vista have convinced me to be very thankful for the stability of Windows 7 :)
This is probably my final windows operating system though, I refuse to operate off of a cloud. (Win 8 is cloud based)

[will1947]

It amuses me that 18 months on suddenly people are commenting on a lighthearted comment I made about Windows referring to their TV ad. It did end in LOL which I assumed everyone knows the meaning of. I still posses a laptop running 7 (I don't like the Mac version of MS office) and it crashes quite often.

[hintss]

switch to linux soon?

[altomic]

aside from instructables i use pen and paper.

[HeyImInventingHere]

*LIKE BUTTON*

[joeyoung25]

I would just like to say that from the pictures, Unless you are hiding some major "screw-ups", this desk looks simply amazing! I really like that the top is concrete but is not plain like a driveway. I really like the woodworking you do also. This is a really good looking desk.

[bahi]

Superb, better than those silestone surfaces. But I'd prefer debian or ubuntu instead of win7

[userhck]

Actually in this situation you'd probably be better off with a triple boot consisting of Windows CE (compact embedded), Windows ME (Millenium Edition), and Windows NT (named for the new Intel processor, "N-Ten"). This would, if my calculations are correct, create Windows CE-ME-NT. Maybe later you could upgrade to Windows CON-CR-ETE.

[mdeblasi1]

Or you could cloud compute and go abstract. M

[hintss]

thats almost always based on linux

[bahi]

CE-ME-NET, HAHAHAHA now I understand why microsft says that their OS are solid.

[archion]

Windows CEMENT;
"Hard as a rock, dumb as a brick" ;- )

[X3heartless]

What a knee slapper.

[nitsuj1098]

A picture of it lit up at night would be awesome!

[hivoltage]

Its been quite a while since I completed this instructable, but I never got around to making a light box to illuminate the ends of the optical fibers, unfortunately. I'll have to make it a priority to get that done, maybe over winter break. I also have to haul the slabs back downstairs and out to the backyard again, the sealer I used before didn't work very well, and has largely worn off in the area near my mouse and keyboard. maybe just a wax based sealer would work better in the future. also, I haven't decided how I want to light up the fibers, just some slow color change leds from ebay in a box with dividers would work, but i could also use an arduino to get finer control over the colors and patterns.

[pocketxgirl]

That's really cool. I wish you had posted some pics of the desk with the fiber optics on after it was completed. I bet it's sweet!

[grunja]

thanks. never thought of using cement. be cheaper than marble for a good solid top. great desk too.

[Win7Maniac]

Great project. Do you know how to do it with wood instead of concrete? Concrete gets heavy. I like how you added all that cool stuff, like fiber optic and glass. Awesome. Glad you have Win7, it pwns :) Ryan

[Win7Maniac]

With the light box, use an Arduino with digital potentiometers and RGB LEDs connected to the optic cables. Set the Arduino to tell the pots (potentiometers) to dim one color, and increase the strength of another in the LED. This is based off standard RGB codes, so you could get a color picker freeware, pick a color, and see how much red, green, and blue you should give power to. You need to have a little experience with the Arduino, though. Ryan

[chrwei]

or just use the Arduino PWM outputs, no fancy digipots needed

[agiledesign]

Just wondering if you poured it on a piece of glass if it would have saved some time polishing it? I've considered doing my kitchen counters in a similar manner. Great looking result. Nice write-up and pics too.

[mastamuzz]

there is a special sheet of plastic! is shiny and mostly used for columns that can give you a similar finish! also is easier to vibrate with a rubber mallet just hit the form with the mallet several times, this will ensure that all the cement goes down preventing air bubbles so the final product is even and shiny!!

[agiledesign]

Shiny? I could guess someone could use Polyethylene/Polypropylene sheet since almost NOTHING sticks to it- http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=23655&catid=705. It's also sold at retail hardware/home improvement centers as plastic drop cloth 4 mil. but this can wrinkle and I've never actually done it this way since it would probably not be very shiny.

[hivoltage]

Yeah that probably would create a perfectly smooth and shiny surface right out of the mold, if you can manage to shake all the bubbles out of the concrete. I definitely did not anticipate how many bubbles there would be or how difficult they were to get out of the poured concrete. Also, I wanted my embedded glass shards to show in the finished slab, and they were covered by a thin layer of the concrete when I unmolded it. The only way to expose them was a quick grind with the 50 grit polishing wheel. I saw on one of those shows on hgtv they poured some countertops but used a sheet of thin, hard plastic in the bottom of the mold and the countertop came out of the mold ready to go.

[shelycel26]

hivoltage, where did you buy your glass shards from? Or do you have any recommendations where I might find them? Thanks for your help.

[hivoltage]

I don't remember the name of the site, but google doesn't turn up anything familiar, so they may have gone out of business since I published this instructable. I found one site but the minimum order per color is five pounds at 3 dollars a pound
http://www.recycled-rocks.com/Glass-Gravel-p/gravel.htm
I believe I bought five pounds of earth tone mix and a pound each of extra green and teal for my desk.

[rcafrix]

amazing work, well done!!!

[Johny007]

Looks perfect. Just isn't a bit cold and thus uncomfortable for hands?

[Ranie-K]

Hehe -I just realized that if you had reinforcing steel connected all through the desk, you could incorporate a "tea candle" holder warming the rubar in one end without making it into a fire hazard -because the steel would distribute the heat very effectively throughout the desk.

I think you would have to wait a bit before using it, though. Maybe otherwise, small remnants of water would "boil it apart" -making cracks.

[bennelson]

How about casting a "tile-warmer" right into the concrete? There are very inexpensive electric heating pads designed to go under tile floors to heat them. Maybe one of those could give a nice, warm concrete desktop!

[WPee]

HOT ROCKS - FIBER OPTIC - SOLAR POWER 3 elements in tune with such a great project. Tap into the solar lights on the patio/driveway and you have a night light on your desk GREAT JOB keep up the great work

[dvawolk]

I was also thinking about that. Maybe for an outdor table in the autumn and winter time... Or maybe to add some other color of broken glas in one small circle and add there more warmers to get to arround 60 degree celsius - so that you always have a warm cup of coffe or tea?! That would be awsome for kitchen use if you bake bread or simmilar things...

[dvawolk]

you can even cheaper make it with a resistor wire and a very small portion of electrical knowledge! Maybe ading a half centimeter thick copper circle on the plate an below it a heating element - copper has a better thermal dissipation...

[hivoltage]

I was just thinking today I should have embedded some copper tubing in it so that I could use the desk as a passive radiator for a water cooled PC! that would probably keep the desk warm and keep cpu temperatures down too...

[dvawolk]

In case this may give you some guidelines: 80-150W per sq. meter is a guideline when heating floors at home... So, that would be really great! Such a large surface would definately keep the cpu temperature down :-O.

[Smaj]

there is an alternative to the pads, i'm not sure its called, and i'm sure you can get an adapter for it so you can simple plug it strait into a plug socket, or even adapt one into a desk just like it!

its baisilly a wire, pretty thin, i believe you can buy it in 5m^{2 packs, but i'm not sure what exact quantaties, its extreamly flexible (as its just a wire) and you can decide how cloth the loops are together and such and such.}

nor am i sure what the electrical specifications are, but there you go =]

hopefully you get what i mean.