How To Make a Cement Path [Video]

hey kids

so today i’m going to show you how to

mix concrete or cement uh if you’ve

never done that before and i’m actually

going to show you how to

uh build a a little pathway i’ll show

you the pathway that i built with this

thing years ago

probably 15 years

and yeah so i’m going to walk you

through that and today’s video is

actually sponsored by lubriderm

uh when lubriderm reached out to me they

basically said uh you know how can we

support you and i thought okay um and i

mentioned it to my daughter and she

actually loves luberderm they’re uh a

part of her routine and so she’ll be

doing a video of what that looks like i

think in a couple months

um and yeah and i’ve always had good uh

experience with libraderm so i thought

yeah this is a good fit and i appreciate

the fact that they wanted to support

what we’re doing

um and when you mix concrete the reason

they’re sponsoring this video

when you mix concrete or cement and you

get it on your hands

uh

cement is basically you know dried uh

rock or powdered rock right and it’s

looking for moisture and so if you

get it on your hands it’s drawing that

moisture out of your hands it can be

really rough on your hands i mean if you

if you’re not able to use gloves or

for this particular thing i don’t use

gloves and i kind of like to get the

feel of the cement you’ll see that when

we go to finish uh what the pathway

looks like i like to

get rid of the seams and i rub my

fingers over it and so it gets on my

hands and then so then you use lubriderm

to to re-moisturize your hands so

anyway uh we’ll get into it here in just

a second but before we do that i do have

a dad joke for you

so

what’s the difference between concrete

and pavement

ah it’s a gray area

ah so anyway let’s get started

okay so i’m going to show you how i mix

cement people have different methods for

doing it but this has worked well for me

over the years you know i don’t use

cement uh

every day

but i

you know i’ve

put up fences and so you need cement to

set the posts and then um you’ll need it

for you know this form that i’m going to

make today comes in handy just to know

how to do it and kind of what

consistency you’re looking for so

i’ll show you how i do that now

so you can um mix your cement in a

wheelbarrow sometimes people do that um

i i’ve just bought this cheap little

thing here to kind of protect my

wheelbarrow because

you have to make sure

you can see it’s got some cement left

over from before because you’ve got to

make sure you rinse everything when

you’re working with cement your tools

you know you’ll end up having little

bits of cement on it

if you don’t clean it thoroughly so

um so anyway here’s how i do it i

normally just cut a

cut it right down the middle like that

this is just a mini trowel that’s what

that’s called mini trowel there’s bigger

ones you know you see for brick layers

um but this one i’ve used this a lot for

a lot of different things and you’ll see

it’ll come in handy for that form that

i’m going to be putting the cement into

so then i just take this

lift it up it can be a little bit messy

so a lot of times i’ll do this on my

grass but this is

a little better view for you

so i’m just going to take this one and

set it off to the side

put this one here

so if you’re mixing up a small batch you

can just get away with this um but i’m

gonna use my um

my shovel my flat shovel just to show

you how i do it so

okay so i have a bucket of water here

you can also just use a hose but i’m

just going to use this bucket because

it’s

pretty easy to control how much i’m

adding you know a hose if you got a

nozzle on me and you can control it too

and a lot of times people will say you

may

make a hole here but i’m not mixing that

much so it shouldn’t be that big a deal

i’m just going to go ahead and mix half

and then i’ll mix the other half in too

um

and you just kind of um spread it around

right get the

water kind of working around

before you can really start mixing it

but this is the motion that i always

used

so

so

[Music]

so that’s actually a pretty good

consistency right here um i’ll get you a

close-up of it when i pour the form but

you don’t want it too soupy

if it’s soupy

it’s tough

it’s tough to work with it doesn’t stay

where you want it and since i’m building

those forms if i made this really runny

and i was putting it in the form it’s

going to seep out

it’s a mess

so you want to be a little

conservative on your water

especially at first

once uh

once you kind of

get close then you’re gonna you know

again just make sure you don’t because

if you don’t have any more cement to

keep uh soaking up the water

then you’re kind of stuck

uh

with soupy cement so you want to keep it

this is a pretty good consistency

so i’ll get a close-up of that

okay so you see see how this is kind of

it’s holding together

but you can still work with it

this is about what i’m looking for this

but i’m going to go ahead and add that

too but i’m going to mess with that so

be careful

actually this is a great consistency i

might just go ahead and use this

um

and start my form and then i’ll come

back and i’ll mix that last little bit

just to kind of keep this easy to work

with so

okay so i’ve got everything elevated

here for you like i have said previously

i normally would just do this in place

but i’m just going to show you this

because i don’t actually need uh

i don’t need need this at my house right

now but i’m just showing you

so this is a form that you can buy

and you just get it like that and then

i’m just going to set it on some

cardboard because i’ll be able to trans

uh transport this wherever i’ll probably

end up using it um over by my shed

um

but anyway so i just have my trowel and

i’ll get you a close-up of this i just

want to kind of give an introduction for

you so basically all i’m gonna do is

take some of this

i’m going to put it down inside here

see i think that’s a great consistency

with this uh

with this cement because it was runny

it’d be seeping everywhere

so basically i’m just filling

filling these up

kind of pack it down make sure that it’s

filling the whole thing up right

so

work it around to make sure that you’re

filling all the spots

see this like i said this is a perfect

consistency because it’s

moist enough to work with but not

not so moist that it’s going to run

through everything

doing multiple bags of this stuff too

it’s good to just clean up along your

way i’m only going to do one bag but

what i normally do is if i’m doing

multiple bags i’ll just

use one and stick the rest off down in

it so you have it nice instead of having

cement bags all over your yard while

you’re while you’re putting up a fence

okay

all right let’s finish this up

so you just want to make it kind of

smooth

and i’m going to come back i’m going to

let this

set for probably

probably

two hours maybe

and then i’m going to come back and

clean it up

um so i can get rid of those seams too

much

you can play with it and play with it

a little bit of uh marks on it whatever

that’s fine right as

it makes a little look look a little

more rustic so all right dispose of this

i’m just going to put it on you know i

might even just

put it on top of this bag

so

so

so

okay so i’ll just rinse out the rest of

that

um pretty

pretty close to 60 pound bag so that’s

all that’s left over for that so i’ll

just kind of

mash that up and

throw that away

make a mud pie out of it

okay so i’m going to rinse this up let

this sit for

a couple hours and then i’m gonna come

back and

and clean it up so

all right so i’m gonna go ahead and

clean this up i thought i’d show you

this tool too this is called a mason’s

hammer and

if you do

end up leaving cement on

see there’s some cement left that was

left on this

you can bang this stuff off it’s a

little bit of work so it’s better to

just clean it up front i’ve had this

this is the one i built my fence with um

you know 20 years ago so

uh obviously i probably could have taken

a little better care of it learned from

my bad example there um but you can bang

this stuff off with this tool if you

want to so could take a little a little

while but just so you know so i’m just

going to go ahead and

put the water in here i got this extra

water

doesn’t take much to

rinse it off right

but it does take a lot to get it off

once it’s hardened so

uh

like i said learn from learn from my bad

example here uh

yeah because that makes the shovel heavy

too because you’re carrying around all

that cement so

all right

okay so it’s been a couple hours and one

of the things i like to do is just kind

of

wiggle it a little bit just to kind of

set it free from this mold

okay and it’s got these little lips on

the side here so i can kind of grab it

see that how it’s kind of setting it

free

there we go

okay

so now

i’m going to show you this up close so

let’s remove that

there we go it’s looking really good and

i’ll show you what i do now i got to

make sure to rinse this good so that

it’s ready next time i need it right i’m

going to set that down for now

and then this is what i do

is i just kind of go through because it

right now it’s got these um ridges on it

i’m going to give you a close-up look at

that but basically i’m just going to

kind of pat those down

so that this looks

nice and even

it’s already kind of starting to set

see so i’m just going to wipe out those

those ridges there you can keep them if

you want but

i thought it just kind of looks a little

nicer when i do that so you see this see

these ridges here

right along here there’s a ridge right

i’m just kind of moving that

removing that so that’s not there

okay

okay

you can kind of smooth it or rough it up

a little bit with your

hands

if you want

okay

you could wear gloves for this if you

if you wanted to but

and some people’s skin like i said is

really sensitive to

to cement but my my skin is not um but

it’s still you know this if you get this

stuff on your hands it uh

again it’s looking for moisture so it

draws the moisture out of your hands so

then we’re going to go ahead and use

lubriderm when we’re done to put that

moisture back okay

see that so

kind of get rid of those ridges there

and then kind of rough it up

okay i think that’s about good

and so now it just needs to finish

finish setting up

and remember how i talked about you know

making sure you you packed it in there

good see we don’t have any air pockets

which is good so

so this is a nice little

little form here and then what i would

do

uh if i was doing this on the ground i

would take my form

and i would set it

on the next

spot right because it’s gonna these are

gonna connect just like this i think you

can see that see how that connects i

could go this way with it or i can go

that way with it okay

so here’s the path that i

laid down probably 15 years ago

um you can see it’s a little overgrown

by our um

my wife’s uh beautiful flowers but i

just need to trim those back um

but anyway so it’s held up pretty well

right i actually laid this

um in place

at the time

okay thank you luberderm for sponsoring

this video on how to make concrete um

and as i finish up i’m gonna go ahead

and add a little bit of moisture to my

hands

so

anyway concrete’s very helpful for

for all kinds of different things

different projects and if you’ve never

done it before you never used it before

you want that nice consistency that

you know

people say like a milkshake and i think

i even said that in my book maybe i i

think a little bit thicker than

maybe a thick milkshake how about that

uh but yeah so then you can set your

fence posts you know you can

make those pathways like i have some

people will use it to make art and it’s

fairly inexpensive you know but it’s

very useful um so if you’ve never mixed

it before

that’s that’s how i do it um you know

people use a wheelbarrow but then you

know you got to make sure you clean

everything when you’re done too

otherwise you know we go back to use it

and it’s going to have

cement stuck to it so

anyway i hope this video was helpful for

you thanks for watching and god bless

you