Stage 6: Backsplash
Warning this is long and detailed. Probably my most detailed post yet about the kitchen because tiling is hard and I don't want to forget what I did.
This step has made the kitchen really look like it's coming together! I definitely learned some things along the way and a few things I would do differently in the future.
I am in LOVE with glass subway tile. I thought that since I had tiled our shower with white porcelain tiles, I could step it up to the big girl glass subway tiles. Well.... it is stunningly beautiful, but I may go with the white subway tile next time even though I love this look. It was a lot of work. I would probably be willing to do it again if Aaron said yes, but seeing as how he was the one cutting all the tiles and getting a few glass shards stuck in his hands... well I am not so sure he will say yes :\ And I got a couple shards in my fingers and we had to sweep really well after.
So we thought we could tile in one day. One day sandwiched between our trip to Virginia and our trip to Georgia. Well of course as most things go, it took longer. It took a day and a half and approximately 9 hours total.
We used glass subway tiles from Home Depot. Order online and then they will put it in your car for you :) Big Bonus. They are heavy.
So the cons of glass tiles:
1. It is difficult to cut. Our tile saw blade was for glass, but given the property dynamics of glass, it is naturally not going to cut as nicely (said my engineering husband).
2. It has no self spacers like the typical white porcelain tiles so we bought tile spacers that were 1/16". I would definitely use that grout size spacing again. I used 1/8" spacers for the bottom row between the tile and the butcher block. The spacers were a PAIN. I mean PAIN. They would barely stay in the wall and kept falling out.
The pros of glass tile:
1. SO FREAKING beautiful! the end.
1. We usually use thin set/ mortar that you have to mix with a paddle and drill. They say not to mix more than you can use in 30 minutes.... but hello it takes us hours so we don't want to be mixing every 30 minutes because it takes about 15 minutes to get it all mixed up. So we mixed the entire bag thinking you can make it work for a days worth. If it gets dry, you just add more water and mix up again (which works for about 2-3 hours). But we took too long and it wasn't sticking to the wall as well and we were extremely tired at the end of day one. So we pitched the rest of the mortar.
On day two, I went to Lowe's and bought premixed Tile Adhesive! Amazing stuff and if we ever tile a backsplash or wall again, this is what I could buy every time. It was smoother. It was easier to back butter the tiles on the bottom row. It didn't dry out. You can close the lid and come back to it easily on another day. It is small enough that it can fit on the countertop instead of reaching into a huge 5 gallon bucket. WAY WAY easier. It is the same price at mortar and covers only a little less area, but for a regular kitchen size backsplash it would cover everything fully with one tub.
2. Defintely back butter the bottom row of tiles. (Back buttering is putting the adhesive on the tile, not on the wall). Not because it makes it easier, but because you don't get thin set/ adhesive stuck between the countertop and tiles making the painters tape difficult to remove after the tiling is complete. Some painters tape is stuck to our countertops now, but will be hidden when I caulk it later.
3. You can't be paranoid about perfections. There any many imperfections and not perfectly straight lines every where and definite areas where we had to fudge. But when you step back you can hardly tell. (This one is hard for me).
4. Get closer to the wall outlets than you think. On day two we realized that the area around one of our outlets from day one wasn't going to be covered by the outlet plate. So we cut little pieces of tile to fit around it... but when you look closely you can tell we messed up the subway tile pattern there. Oh well.
5. I used gray mortar on two walls and then on the last wall the adhesive was white. I had read this on other sites, but it's true, use the color closest to the grout color. I should have used white mortar, but we had extra gray from our floors and we were trying to save money and time by not getting more mortar. There are a few areas where the mortar was raised a little bit and after I grouted it still shows through.
6. We measured the space for our range hood and put the anchors in the walls before I tiled and I tiled around them. We also built and installed one open shelf so that I could tile around it. When then removed the shelf so I can paint it, but it was there for the tiling.
My last adventure tiling the bathroom shower walls was a nightmare because I let the grout sit too long before wiping and I ended up spending extra hours scraping it. It was awful. This time was 1,000 times better. It took 3 hours to grout the three walls. I used one bag of grout and just added water and mixed more before I started each wall. We did use the kind you have to mix with the paddle and drill.
Grouting thoughts and tips:
A 2" putty knife is your friend. We used a grout float to spread everything on the tile, but the grout float wouldn't fit between the sink and window ledge so I used the little putty knife and it was perfect. I also used the putty knife to grout the very bottom tile at the countertop because I didn't want to get any on the countertop.
I got this beautiful grout color called "Smoke." AFTER grouting, I went back to buy the matching colored caulk only to discover that they don't sell or even make the matching color caulk. What?! That's ludicrous. They should warn people. So I picked white caulk because it will match the cabinets and the smoke color is a really really light gray so I think it should be ok. I have since learned that if you flip over the color strips of grout color samples it actually tells you what other products Lowe's sells in that shade. So I suppose they do tell you, but who knew to look there? Not me.
Here are the steps I used and had NO trouble getting it all clean and shiny in those three hours. (Keep in mind I am not a pro) I typically don't do a step by step for each kitchen stage, but tiling is tricky and I don't want to forget how I did it this time and how awesome it was.
This step has made the kitchen really look like it's coming together! I definitely learned some things along the way and a few things I would do differently in the future.
I am in LOVE with glass subway tile. I thought that since I had tiled our shower with white porcelain tiles, I could step it up to the big girl glass subway tiles. Well.... it is stunningly beautiful, but I may go with the white subway tile next time even though I love this look. It was a lot of work. I would probably be willing to do it again if Aaron said yes, but seeing as how he was the one cutting all the tiles and getting a few glass shards stuck in his hands... well I am not so sure he will say yes :\ And I got a couple shards in my fingers and we had to sweep really well after.
So we thought we could tile in one day. One day sandwiched between our trip to Virginia and our trip to Georgia. Well of course as most things go, it took longer. It took a day and a half and approximately 9 hours total.
We used glass subway tiles from Home Depot. Order online and then they will put it in your car for you :) Big Bonus. They are heavy.
So the cons of glass tiles:
1. It is difficult to cut. Our tile saw blade was for glass, but given the property dynamics of glass, it is naturally not going to cut as nicely (said my engineering husband).
2. It has no self spacers like the typical white porcelain tiles so we bought tile spacers that were 1/16". I would definitely use that grout size spacing again. I used 1/8" spacers for the bottom row between the tile and the butcher block. The spacers were a PAIN. I mean PAIN. They would barely stay in the wall and kept falling out.
The pros of glass tile:
1. SO FREAKING beautiful! the end.
Some tips we learned while tiling:
1. We usually use thin set/ mortar that you have to mix with a paddle and drill. They say not to mix more than you can use in 30 minutes.... but hello it takes us hours so we don't want to be mixing every 30 minutes because it takes about 15 minutes to get it all mixed up. So we mixed the entire bag thinking you can make it work for a days worth. If it gets dry, you just add more water and mix up again (which works for about 2-3 hours). But we took too long and it wasn't sticking to the wall as well and we were extremely tired at the end of day one. So we pitched the rest of the mortar.
On day two, I went to Lowe's and bought premixed Tile Adhesive! Amazing stuff and if we ever tile a backsplash or wall again, this is what I could buy every time. It was smoother. It was easier to back butter the tiles on the bottom row. It didn't dry out. You can close the lid and come back to it easily on another day. It is small enough that it can fit on the countertop instead of reaching into a huge 5 gallon bucket. WAY WAY easier. It is the same price at mortar and covers only a little less area, but for a regular kitchen size backsplash it would cover everything fully with one tub.
2. Defintely back butter the bottom row of tiles. (Back buttering is putting the adhesive on the tile, not on the wall). Not because it makes it easier, but because you don't get thin set/ adhesive stuck between the countertop and tiles making the painters tape difficult to remove after the tiling is complete. Some painters tape is stuck to our countertops now, but will be hidden when I caulk it later.
3. You can't be paranoid about perfections. There any many imperfections and not perfectly straight lines every where and definite areas where we had to fudge. But when you step back you can hardly tell. (This one is hard for me).
4. Get closer to the wall outlets than you think. On day two we realized that the area around one of our outlets from day one wasn't going to be covered by the outlet plate. So we cut little pieces of tile to fit around it... but when you look closely you can tell we messed up the subway tile pattern there. Oh well.
5. I used gray mortar on two walls and then on the last wall the adhesive was white. I had read this on other sites, but it's true, use the color closest to the grout color. I should have used white mortar, but we had extra gray from our floors and we were trying to save money and time by not getting more mortar. There are a few areas where the mortar was raised a little bit and after I grouted it still shows through.
6. We measured the space for our range hood and put the anchors in the walls before I tiled and I tiled around them. We also built and installed one open shelf so that I could tile around it. When then removed the shelf so I can paint it, but it was there for the tiling.
Grouting
My last adventure tiling the bathroom shower walls was a nightmare because I let the grout sit too long before wiping and I ended up spending extra hours scraping it. It was awful. This time was 1,000 times better. It took 3 hours to grout the three walls. I used one bag of grout and just added water and mixed more before I started each wall. We did use the kind you have to mix with the paddle and drill.
Grouting thoughts and tips:
A 2" putty knife is your friend. We used a grout float to spread everything on the tile, but the grout float wouldn't fit between the sink and window ledge so I used the little putty knife and it was perfect. I also used the putty knife to grout the very bottom tile at the countertop because I didn't want to get any on the countertop.
I got this beautiful grout color called "Smoke." AFTER grouting, I went back to buy the matching colored caulk only to discover that they don't sell or even make the matching color caulk. What?! That's ludicrous. They should warn people. So I picked white caulk because it will match the cabinets and the smoke color is a really really light gray so I think it should be ok. I have since learned that if you flip over the color strips of grout color samples it actually tells you what other products Lowe's sells in that shade. So I suppose they do tell you, but who knew to look there? Not me.
Here are the steps I used and had NO trouble getting it all clean and shiny in those three hours. (Keep in mind I am not a pro) I typically don't do a step by step for each kitchen stage, but tiling is tricky and I don't want to forget how I did it this time and how awesome it was.
- Use painters tape to tape at the countertop, walls, and cabinets. I used cardboard at the layer over the counter with I really likes because I could easily shift it so where I was working each time.
- Mix the grout according to directions.
- Spread the grout on the wall.
- Shove it in the cracks and then wipe excess off with the grout float. Do an area of about 3x3' at a time.
- While that area is sitting, repeat steps 1 and 2 on the next 3x3' area. Leave it alone.
- Jump back to the first area and wipe with a grouting sponge. Then clean the sponge out and wipe two more times. Leave it be until the grout dries and a little filmy layer is left.
- White it's drying, jump back to the 2nd area and wipe with a sponge 2-3 times.
- When the filmy layer is almost dry, wipes one more time with the wet sponge. And let dry again to be filmy. At this point, remove all the painters tape in the area so that if there was any grout on the cabinet or countertop you can quickly wipe it up while it's wet.
- Keep grouting other areas while you are waiting to the filmy layer to dry.
- Once it's all white and filmy, buff with an old t-shirt and it will come right off beautifully.
- Keep going with this process until it's all grouted!
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