The kitchen is one of the busiest rooms in most homes. It gets the most use and the most traffic, so it only makes sense to give it the beauty and durability that it deserves.
If you’re considering a face-lift for your kitchen and you’re curious about concrete countertops, look no further. Let’s break down the key differences between pre-cast and cast-in-place concrete countertops.
Pre-Cast Concrete Countertops
Pre-cast means that the countertop was poured into a mold before being placed on top of your kitchen cabinets. It entails measuring your space, building a mold, and installing the concrete once it’s dry. Let’s talk about the pros and cons of this process.
Pros
- You can re-pour it if you make a mistake. This is one of the biggest advantages of pre-cast countertops. If you mess something up, you can always redo it.
- Pouring the concrete into a mold outside in your garage helps to protect other surfaces in your kitchen such as floors and sinks.
- The countertop is removable. If you don’t like it, or you want to change it out, later on, you can!
Cons
- You have to build the mold. This can be labor-intensive, depending on how complicated your space is and how many custom angles you have.
- It can be confusing to build the mold because you flip the countertop over to install it. The top of the counter is actually the part of the concrete that is in the bottom of the mold. So you have to build the mold as a mirror-image of your actual space.
- It can be heavy to move. Depending on the size, it can be nearly impossible to carry and install once it dries.
Cast-In-Place Concrete Countertops
These countertops are poured into a frame, in your kitchen, on top of your cabinets. This process includes measuring and nailing a concrete board to the top of your countertops, building the frame to fit, blocking off spaces for your faucet and accessories, and pouring the concrete directly into the frame.
Let’s look at the pros and cons for this process.
Pros
- You don’t have to move a heavy concrete slab after it’s poured because it’s already in place.
- You won’t have any seams in your countertop because it was poured all at the same time.
- If you have lots of custom angles or rounded edges, it’s much easier to do this than to try to build a mold that will match.
Cons
- This can get really messy, and you could get concrete all over sinks, floors and other surfaces.
- You can’t just break the mold and re-pour if you make a mistake. It’s much more difficult to fix any issues that arise.
- Changing out or replacing the countertops will be much more challenging down the line if you renovate again.
Conclusions
Concrete countertops are durable, pretty, and trendy. Installing them doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Simply consider which option will work best for you and go for it!
