A Nice Little Sunday Project

Since I have painted every possible piece of trim in this house and Jeremy has rewired every possible wire in this house, we found ourselves searching for things to do this past weekend. We were both excited to try something different. We were going to tackle tiling!

We purchased Luxor Valley tiles from Home Depot (obviously). And then we harassed the tile lady at Home Depot with questions on how to install said tile. Have you guys seen this Lowe's commercial? Because it's us.

We felt like we had a good handle on the process so on Sunday morning, I laid the adhesive backing. I started by wiping down the wall so we'd have the cleanest surface possible, and then I applied the contact paper.  

I then smoothed out any air bubbles with my little paddle (I'm sure that has an official name,  I just don't know it).

Then we started adding the tiles. This was smooth sailing until we realized we needed to cut the end tiles so we'd have a straight line. We don't have a wet saw and we wanted to avoid purchasing one because we don't see a lot more tile laying in our future. We remember we had bought this random little tool at the Home Show in Boston last year, and it ended up working like a charm. Score!



So the tile was looking good...but it needed a little something more. Off to Home Depot and Lowe's I went to find the perfect trim! I ended up finding it, only to discover it should have been laid before we put the tile down. They recommended I buy a little piece of wood trim but I was adamant that I didn't want to paint one more piece of trim, no matter how tiny it might be. Plus, I thought it would look weird. So I decided to proceed with the original edge (the one that should have been laid first). We pulled back the tile and jammed the edge in. And, miraculously, it worked!

So next up, we had to lay the grout. I looked at the size of our grout bag and the area of our surface and decided we should only mix up 1/3 of the grout (terrible call). Math isn't really my thing (actually, I was freakishly good at Algebra and Calculus, I guess multiplications and fractions aren't my thing. And neither is the metric system.) Anyway, the mixture came out way too soupy. I ended up adding more powder so we would get the desired consistency. But we came up really short in the end, and Jeremy had to whip up a second batch of grout. Oops! I told you math wasn't my thing.

But we persisted. Jeremy was the grouter and I was the wiper. You have to move QUICKLY before the grout dries/sets so it's a little stressful. I had a bucket that I had to keep cleaning out down in the utility sink so that slowed down a bit. Here's an action shot

I promptly scheduled a hair appointment for tonight once I saw this picture.

And here's close up which is a little more true to color, I think:

In the upcoming weeks we'll be hanging the hood and placing the stove in front of the tile so it won't be as noticeable (I hope). If not, I think it would be easy enough to take down. And we're pretty experienced with tile removal these days...

All in all, this was a pretty painless process. My tips for anyone who plans to attempt this themselves would be to figure out edging before you tile and make sure you have a math person figure out how much grout you'll need. If you take care of those things, it should be a piece of cake!