Tiling the night, and the weekend, and the whole next week away is actually a more accurate representation of how this little adventure has gone down!
It all started about a year ago, right after we moved into this house, when I found a tile that I REALLY loved for the backsplash in our kitchen. As time went by, and more and more cooking was done in there, the walls were getting pretty darn yucky and greasy-spotted (I'm not necessarily the most graceful, tidiest cook-I get things taken care of-period.) and I knew that the backsplash really was a necessity*.
So, yea, we ordered up that tile a couple weeks ago, without having seen the tile in person (I was feeling really confident in this decision evidently), and decided we were going to do this thing ourselves. Here's the timeline:
Wednesday: tile arrives, and I awkwardly tell people that upon opening the boxes, it literally took my breath away. I'm special.
(It also took Thomas' breath away...but thankfully, he was able to regain composure for this picture)
Thursday: around 10pm Jeff and I decide," hey, our backsplash would look way better if we didn't have that gangster 4 inch granite piece coming up the wall"...so after reading a post online by someone who had removed their slab, we grabbed a razor blade and a couple other tools (which were
not the appropriate tools for the job) to try to shimmy that slab off the drywall without causing tooooo much damage.
The granite piece and trim pre-destruction...
This is what the kitchen looked like a year ago!
Pulling off that slab
all the tearing off revealed a nice LARGE gap between the wall and the counter top
After the tearing up
Friday: Emma babysits Jacob and Thomas while Jeff and I have a romantic night on the town down in Kennesaw at Floor and Decor- the big tile shop. We stocked up on all the necessary supplies for the tiling job and got to witness several workers snicker to themselves as we explained that no, we hadn't ever laid tile before...and yes, the tile that we chose for our first time out was a curvy, mosaic-type thing. I'm pretty sure the guy at the store didn't want to sell Jeff a wet saw. It was that funny. But GUESS WHAT? WE AIN'T SCARED!
Saturday: Tile all stinking day long. No further explanation needed. But just for the fun of it, here's some more explanation: It was horrible- I thought, at least. Cutting that tile was beastly...Jeff handled that. I mainly threw up the mastic and stuck the tiles up that Jeff had measured and cut...Jeff was just hanging out in the garage on a 40 degree day with a wet saw that flung freezing water at him all day, trying not to lose his numb fingers to the blade. It was great. By the end of the day...like a 12 hour tiling day...it didn't look finished. We had thrown in the trowel (yea, I had typed "towel", but Jeff was "proofing" my work and pointed out that he couldn't believe the punny opportunity I missed-well played Jeffrey) on trying to trim the edge pieces down to a small enough size (everytime you snipped them, they'd crack and break, leaving shards of sharp porcelain tile all over the place). I knew it was time to call it a day when I was cleaning up the adhesive that was splooshing out from in between the tile and wiped up some of my own blood on the tile. When I get injured, I'm out.
Yea, tiling in the corner under the microwave wasn't the most awesome thing I've ever done.
Cutting those sons of guns to go around the outlets
Progress at the end of the day
Sunday: Our best friend in the whole entire world, Adam, brought over his tile scorer device thing to let Jeff see if that would get our skinny cuts taken care of better than the wet saw or our snippers. It was a miracle worker, but after a very busy church-filled Sunday, I said no to hanging anymore tile after connect group that night.
Monday: In between grocery shopping with two younguns (one of which may or may not be in the midst of these "terrible twos" I've heard spoken of), teaching Jacob to be a rocket scientist/printing his lower case letters neatly and carefully, preparing food every hour and a half for these two children who eat like full grown humans, and whatever else we do all day, my job was to stick up the rest of the tile and start the painful job of chipping away at the sloppy mastic job I did the first go round which splooshed out of the tile (as I mentioned above). Result: we survived, I did my tiling job...at least most of it, and I cut my hand on more tile shards. The end.
Not too proud to put little fingers to work pulling out the tile spacers:
Tuesday: More cleaning out sloppy adhesive job. After Jeff got home from work, he threw up the grout which was pretty rewarding, and things were getting closer to looking finished, however it was NOT DONE YET!!!
Before grouting
After grouting...and no white balancing (I'm just throwing out photography terms here, play along)...basically, the picture above is the true color of the tile in real life, aka white.
Wednesday: When Jeff got home from work this time, he caulked all the edges so the job really looked finished...again, not entirely, but close. I suffered from a nervous breakdown and refused to help with any of the tiling this evening. In fact, I threw down my slotted spoon and refused to finish dinner (due to no one's fault but my own, might I add)...for like 20 minutes, at one point that evening too. It was kind of a shining moment. But the tile was looking much better, and I was able to picture my knives and fruit and canisters back in the kitchen in the near future. Jeff had to do some outlet extending stuff that night too so the outlet covers would sit on top of the tile.
Thursday: I cleaned the you-know-what (grout, mastic, blood) out of those counters in the morning before we had friends come play for the day. I swept the floor and collected 2 pounds of tile shrapnel which could have ended up in a child's foot, or hand, or bottom, or face,etc. and safely dumped it in the trash. I put things back on the counter. And I cried tears of joy.
Friday: Stuck up the new outlet covers and wept some more, because of the trip to Lowes in the 30 degree weather (with two children who have experienced very little truly cold weather and were therefore miserable, like me in the cold!) which ended in me madly texting Jeff to give me instructions on which outlet covers to buy otherwise I would have to leave making my own decision since there was a two year old Thomas screaming at the top of his lungs and throwing a fit and swinging his coat around, hitting things on the shelves. Soooo, yes, that's why there may have been more tears.
Saturday: While mother dear (me) was away painting a nursery for a buddy, father took the children BACK to Lowes to return what I had purchased for outlet covers and bought the correct size covers...and switched to a totally different look. Making decisions with a screaming child is very challenging for me evidently and I can't be trusted in cases like that. He threw up those covers, and changed out the actual outlet thingies so they are white instead of off white. Much to my shigrin, our post lady brought Jeff a package today...for more kitchen work! NOOOOOO!!!! The backsplash is just getting to be DONE! So, Jeff opened that package and got to work installing some under the cabinet lighting (which will be lovely purely from a
functional standpoint, but as an added bonus, it looks swell too). Yay! Another project!
Sunday: Figured out a bit of the under-cabinet lighting, but not without much frustration. Quit for the day when our small group peeps started to come over!
Monday: IT'S OVER!! Jeff finished the under cabinet lighting tonight while I was gone...so, without any further ado (I can't believe you have actually read this whole thing)...the after pics!
*not actually a necessity, but a beautiful luxury that could be wiped clean too...oooo!
