Saying goodbye to the old backsplash
Are you curious where that cabinet above the hood vent ran off to? It was used in another project, view the cabinet turned into a storage table here. I also used one of the cabinet doors to make a pull out trash can in place of where my trash compactor was at.
I had to patch a couple holes in the wall.
I ended up going with a travertine 3x6 tile from Nebraska Furniture Mart. I also purchased this pencil railing to go on the bottom near the countertop.
For majority of the kitchen I went in a staggered pattern. Instead of going with a 3" stagger (where they line up in the middle of the tile) I chose 2". Supposedly it makes the room appear larger. How did I reach the decision between regular staggered versus every 1/3??? Easy, I laid the patterns out on the floor and let my son pick the one he liked best.
Now above the stove, that's now missing both a hood vent as well as a cabinet got a little something special. In that area only I changed the pattern to a diagonal herringbone. Seemed trendy so I went for it. Here are some other patterns I looked at.
This was my first time tiling ever. What I gained from this experience is not to rush anything. It was soooo time consuming but at the end of the day, I'm glad I took my time and made it look right. Between all the cutting and making sure everything was laid out right it took me about 4 days to complete, granted majority of this time I was working alone.
I chose a 1/8" spacer, for this size spacing you have to use sanded grout. So let's see some pictures of what the tile looks like with the spacers.
I decided to have the tile go all the way up to the ceiling. The only reason I chose to do this was because my walls were uneven. I could never get the walls sanded down right after mudding between the windows and cabinets so it seemed like a simple fix. It really makes the trim stand out, now I just need to replace those old brown blinds....
After this point, which was a couple days in already. my lovely sister came to help me finish the rest. Thank goodness she did because I was super nervous about tackling the herringbone pattern by myself.
Not the most becoming angle but seriously, I wanted to show how crazy this was...getting off and on the counters to cut tile.
Diagonal herringbone pattern.
My amazing sister.
LAST PIECE
It's funny how the smallest changes make such an impact on the overall finish. Outlets are a good example. Here's what we started with:
But with a simple change it made the kitchen look that much more updated.
After that, I started grouting. I used polyblend which I got at home depot, the color was called quartz. I ended up needing 2 bags (probably could have got by with one but I mixed way too much on my first round). I was trying to hard to stay out of the holes and imperfections on the tile but that was a lost cause. I didn't get all the grout out of the tiles nooks and crannies but once it dried it looks fine. Let me tell you, when I first put on the grout I thought "OH NOOOOOOO". It appeared so dark, but after drying for a day it looked so much better!
Grout and tile were both still wet when this photo was taken.
My kitchen looked like this disaster land for a whole week!
Finally getting to take off all the plastic!
Comparison picture
So this weekends plan is to go over the tile again with a de-hazer, afterwards I'm going to seal the tile and then put clear silicone in between the pencil rail and the countertops.
Next projects on the to do list:
- Build my faux hood vent (it's going to be awesome)
- Paint the cabinets (thinking of white with a brown glaze)
- Change out all the knobs and drawer pulls
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