I have never seen a birdbath like that. Very nice. I used the Garden Gate link & made birdbaths with the vinyl patch cement. Now I use vinyl patch cement, then put my reinforcement on, & then use regular cement for the 2nd coat. The vinyl patch cement is more expensive but very smooth & less holes so I use it on the leaf but not the 2nd coat. I've included pics of my latest cement birdbath - really huge - it's sitting on a huge sewer pipe. It's about a week old. It holds lots of water but at the deepest point it still is 1 1/2". I've also included the pic of the sand. It's hard to tell but I had to put this up to so you can learn from my mistakes. If you notice the top of the sand mount is mostly flat. I made one & it was beautiful but the birds were drowning because it was too deep. So don't make too much of a dome. It's a learning experience. My first was too flat & didn't hold hardly any water. The next was too deep & the birds were drowning. This one is just right. LOL! I had a colorant I was going to add when making cement & forgot to put it in. When it's done curing, I will put a wash on it. There were 6 birds in there yesterday taking a bath. I didn't think they would go near it with all the lime leeching out of it yet. I am changing the water a couple times a day - I don't want to hurt my birds but I'm surprised they would go in it at all with the lime. At the bottom of the page are pics of small leaves I painted with metallic paint. They are a lot smaller & sold them at a nursery this year. It was a hit & I'm busy making more small ones for next year. It paid for my grinder for my stained glass addiction. :) Here is a link that might be useful: Cement leaf

I'm so jealous, and not for it to be used as a composter, but just for more mudane jobs such as mixing compost together with some other substance (topsoil, peat, sand, etc.) before it's spread across your lawn in a topdressing... You really can't be it. My father is a brick mason so my mother, whenever she would overseed the lawn would throw a couple cubic feet of topsoil into the mixer along with however many pounds of seed she planned on using and would mix it all up so that the seed was thoroughly mixed into the topdressing...and she would then just lay that out over the lawn, seeds already mixed in...

Hadley, I'm also interested in any responses to this. If it helps any, we built a garage about 7 years ago and installed cimplank, which is a cheaper version of Hardiplank, it came pre-primed, and we finally painted it last fall, it held up great for all those years with just the primer coat! Hopefully others can provide us with their experiences, as we are looking into using the pre-finished Certainteed stained boards for our new house, and are also curious how well the finish will hold up.

Check the hypertufa forum. They are always making neat things outta cement. I'll link one of the posts. carey Here is a link that might be useful: leaf