Where to Find Decorative Inserts
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As the projects profiled in this newsletter demonstrate, often your client will be your best source for decorative inlay material. But you can also obtain decorative inserts from concrete countertop suppliers, such as these semi-precious stones, crushed glass pieces and fossil inlays from Cheng Concrete.
Find more suppliers of concrete countertop materials.
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What to Watch: Using Decorative Inserts in Concrete Countertops
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Designer Fu-Tung Cheng demonstrates his techniques for using decorative inserts to personalize concrete countertops. He works with everything from old car parts to natural materials such as coral, semi-precious stone,
fossils and petrified wood.
Watch the video now. |
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Creative Ways With
Countertop Inlays
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 Hi ,
Adding inlays and inserts is a great way to personalize a concrete
countertop in a kitchen, bathroom, or outdoor room. Almost any small object will work, as long as it's not too fragile. Common items include pieces of broken glass,
tiles, stone, metal and seashells. But we've also seen concrete countertops that incorporate family heirlooms, fossils, unusual artifacts and even old car parts. Check out these five examples of how to use inlays to give countertops greater character.
Jim Peterson,
The Concrete Network
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Bathroom for a car enthusiast
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 Shelley Chomistek of Rafter C Precast Concrete transformed the bathroom of a car buff into an automotive men's room using car parts supplied by his client. A polished concrete vanity top with a built-in backsplash incorporates three working car gauges that light up and serve as night
lights.
"Because concrete is a liquid stone, it can be molded to assume
shapes and inlay objects that would be impossible to achieve with
almost any other material," Chomistek says.
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Broken glass lights up a bar top
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 For clients looking for an unusual bar top for entertaining, Alla Linetsky of Concrete Elegance built a cantilevered dark-purple concrete countertop jazzed up with thick chunks of broken glass backlit by LED lighting. The clients even got involved in the act by placing the pieces of glass where they wanted them before the concrete was poured. |
Excavated bottles add historic interest
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 These farm-style concrete countertops, installed in a trio of restored homes in the historic district of Charleston, S.C., incorporate broken bottle fragments dug up from the backyard. They are the remnants of Bixby Bottles, antique ink bottles dating as far back as the 1600s.
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A river runs through it
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 For a client who wanted kitchen countertops with a river theme, Tommy Cook of Absolute ConcreteWorks set stones in the forms, some gathered from a stream on the client's own
property, and then used grinding, polishing and staining to achieve the look of a flowing river. "It comes down to inspiration," says Cook. "We work with the client to get their vision, and then we run with it."
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Kitchen island accented with coral
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 On the corner of this cast-in-place kitchen island is a blue agate stone that was glued
into the mold before the concrete was poured around it. A raised teak-wood
bar on the island complements a teak drainboard by the
sink.
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