Looking for ideas on pouring a cement bartop?
Buy one of those How-To books at the front of Lowe's or Home Despot.
Make bowls in the cement for pretzels. How about having people write things in it when its wet? Maybe set in different types of wood, like cherry. How about small holes at the ends that lead to garbage cans.
This is one of the trickiest concrete pours (actually placement is the correct term). The long expanse and comfortable overhang makes it so. That being said you need to use some 1/4 steel plates directly on top of the bar to support the weight of the overhang. Can the bar itself support the weight of the cement in the first place? Make sure that the concrete totally covers the steel plate and edge. Use melamine for the forms and screws. Support the melamine form with 1x 3's from the underside of the forms to the floor. Find a friend, family member or friend of a friend who is familiar with concrete placement. Rent a mixer to aid in mixing the cement and use a clean rust free rebar. Assuming you're going to use a concrete stain once the cement cures chose a light colored stain to show of the concrete's texture. Buy some brass square stock approx 1/4x 1/4x 12 and layout them out to form a several rows to act as a draining grid for your bar ware and embed them in your concrete after its floated. Buy small frosted glass votive candle holders and embed them upside down randomly so that you can install an fluorescent light under the bar top and allow light to shine through the randomly placed votive candle glasses. Finally get a back issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine, their september 1999, No. 125 issue has an informative article on Poured-In-Place Concrete Countertops
