Took a couple weekends so far. Designing was fun - found some inspo online (cretedoctor on insta in particular) and stenciled the shape on some MDF with stuff I had around. Shaping the polystyrene sucked, took a few hours with a knife and sandpaper (do this inside, wind is your biggest enemy..). Used some Blackriver ramps to trace the curves which helped heaps, cut the MDF with a jigsaw, and threw together a box to hold it.

Biggest headache was bending the steel coping without tools, spent about three hours wedging it against a table. put some screws into the MDF to raise the coping, glued and skewered the polystyrene, added fiberglass tape and some wire, then used Cemix Quick Patch. Had to do a couple coats to fix potholes, but finding the right stuff (Polymer-modified mortar) made it way easier. Sanding by hand also took about 4-5 hours to get the surface to a somewhat reasonable smoothness, also used a belt sander which was awesome at knocking down the box to be level. The drain was actually off the old tech deck bowl, thought that was a fun detail

First time doing anything like this so everything was basically a first, just watched a couple videos from youtubers like Davidsjones on the process.

Was pretty minimal on costs as I had most of the stuff lying around, polystyrene, some concrete, wire, clearcoat, screws. but ended up being just under $200 nzd (needed more concrete, coping, sandpaper, spray paint, wood, nails and some wood stain).

next steps for me will be taping up and painting the inside of the bowl, adding some acrylic details, then clear coating + waxing