Curb It Yourself

I used this to do about 60 feet of curb in front of my house. This tool is great for the price. You do need to be very careful about the mix you use and the amount of water you add. Also keep in my that this thing is plastic. If you are heavy handed with it, you will be changing the shape of the template. If that scares you, buy a metal one. This tool was super forgiving for curves and radii. I found it easier on curves than the straight runs honestly. The tool did not break down at all for me. It lasted the whole 60 feet and still looks brand new.My Mix Recommendation:1 bucket sand0.25 bucket cementMix the dry ingredients together.Add 2.25 quarts of waterMix in a storage tote and use.You want a texture that almost looks like beach sand. You might think "eh this is too dry" but it's perfect. If you have really hard balls forming like whoopers candy, you have too much cement in your mix. Adding more water will not help you. It's too late. Throw it out and start again.The mix I described above will get you about 4 feet of curb with this template give or take. I had 2" beneath my template to gravel I laid. If you aren't adding depth beneath the template at all, expect to get more than 4 feet. If you have a bigger than 2 inch gap beneath, expect to get a little less.Good luck!

The five star rating has a lot to do with the $$ saved! I am sure that a professional would have charged about $8-$10 per foot, while my cost was around $1! As for the performance, well it IS NOT as easy as the YouTube video makes it look for a DIY homeowner that is not a concrete guy.That said, this is still a good buy and very doable as long as you are prepared for the labor and effort that will go into to process. The toughest part, mixing concrete without a mixer.My first job was small, or so I thought, about 25’ of curb, so I figured I would do it by hand, no mixer. With a 47lb bag of Portland Cement and 50lb bags of Play Sand off I went. Since I was doing this by hand I figured that the best way to divide the Portland was by weight. So I got a bucket ant put 11 - 12lbs of Cement in it. I leveled it in the bucket and marked the level in the bucket. I then added the 12 lbs of Cement to 50 lbs (1 bag) of playsand and began dry mixing by hand.Once I had mixed the Cement and sand together I thought through my next concern. A lot of reviews made it clear that you want to work with a mixture that wasn’t too wet, so I surmised that I need to work with small batches at a time to avoid the concrete getting too dry on me. So I would mix one shovel full of concrete with water in a bucket and go to work. This made for a process that was a lot more time and my consistency from batch to batch was varied. This produced different textures and therefore different looks after drying.My look after drying was various “finishes” on the surface. In addition, there were a couple of spots where the concrete mix was too wet and the curb “dropped” down a bit. So, my solution, I mixed a batch of VERY WET concrete (almost concrete “soup”) and applied a top coat to the entire curb! The result turned out to look like one consistent curb and I am very satisfied with the results.I will be doing more curb, but this time I will rent a mixer that can handle one 47 lb bag of Portland and four 50 lb bags of Play Sand at once. I understand the consistency now and will make things a lot easier on myself. Once I got the hang if it, it flowed.Again, I am glad I made the purchase and the commitment to do the job myself. After working with a mixer I will post a review again.Good luck, I hope this review helps!

I recommend wearing gloves that are entirely rubber coated. My knuckles were rubbed very raw. I am pleased with the outcome, and would do it again now that I’ve got a basic technique.

I'm not going to pretend that this was easy and not time consuming but even so, it was totally worth it and I couldn't be happier with the results. This curb in the picture is 55' of curb and took 5.5 hours. It's definitely tedious but the form works exactly as advertised IF...>>>IF<<< you follow the directions and watch the videos on their website. The real key is getting the right consistency of the cement. What you want is concrete that is just like sand that you would build a sand castle with at the beach. It should not be able to flow. With a little patience and learning the technique ahead of time you will be happy with the results. Good luck!DISCLAIMER: If you're one of those people who is 0% handy to begin with, maybe just hire someone to do it.

It's a good idea but the plastic starts wearing out almost immediately, stress cracks appeared after my 2nd 4ft run, and the plastic also wears thin to make the screws scratch the concrete. I fanned out the holes a little wider and deeper to sink the screw heads more. All in all it's an okay product but it not going to last long. It should've been made out of rolled metal I would have gladly paid for the higher quality.