You can use concrete not only for construction, but also for landscaping your territory. For example, you can make garden decor items, or quite practical things, such as a bench. On which you can place a flower pot or just sit down yourself. This design is more durable compared to wooden benches, requires virtually no care or maintenance, and is not afraid of high humidity and water.
Making a concrete bench
The dimensions of the future bench were chosen as follows:
To make formwork for pouring concrete, you will need coated chipboard. The coating will protect the slab from getting wet.
We make a U-shaped frame according to the shape of the drawing.
We cut out the frame with a hacksaw or jigsaw.
We fasten everything with self-tapping screws.
We are not installing the lower part of the bench yet, I will tell you why later.
In order for the bench to be resistant to temperature changes and not crack, it needs to be reinforced. To do this, you need to wall up a piece of reinforcement in the middle of the structure. In our case, it will be a piece of metal mesh from a fence.
We are preparing the mesh to reinforce the structure.
The chipboard itself, due to the coating in the center, is waterproof, but on the sides, at the joints, it will begin to swell when water gets in. To avoid this, coat the joints with sealant.
I made the borders with masking tape and then applied and spread the sealant.
We hang the net on a wire or rope. It should hang in the middle of the bench.
Prepare and pour concrete. It's not that simple. First, the base of the bench is poured and carefully compacted so that there are no air bubbles.
But before that, to prevent the concrete from sticking to the formwork, I lubricated the mold with silicone grease. For this, you can generally use sunflower oil.
Then we cover the base with chipboard and fill in the bench legs.
We wait 3-5 days for drying. After drying, we disassemble the frame.
The bench has a natural stone color and fits perfectly into a natural interior.
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