1st shot at grinding today

Today I took my first shot at grinding the countertop. We had to buy a wet/dry grinder which is like a heavy-duty orbital sander with a water feed in the center. It uses diamond pads to smooth and level the surface.

It was quite a job! Because of the water, the kitchen has to be tarped watertight. This alone takes about 2 hours. Then the grinding goes quite slowly because I could grind for a few minutes and then I had to stop and remove the water with a squeegie. But the results are good! The trowelling bought up a layer of "cream" on top which has a lot of dye so the countertop had a pinkish appearance as opposed to a wine colored appearance which is what we want. As I ground, the dye layer disappeared and a more wine colored layer showed up along with some of the aggregate. So far, so good.

Here is a shot of the countertop after my grinding effort. The right is where I ground. It is still wet, but it is closer to the final color of the countertop.



Here is a shot where you can just begin to see the tiny flecks of white in the countertop. These are the pebbles in the concrete.