Subway Tiled Back Splash...Finally!

I've been waiting patiently for

 10 1/2 years 

for a REAL back splash! 

Did I tell my hubby this?


Yes!


But then again, he loves our new back splash as much as I do.


And the wait was so worth it!


I asked my young-and-cute-handy-dandy-handyman to tile my back splash with my assistance, of course!  He called on a Thursday and said he would be here the next day. We worked on it from noon to nine and finished it in one day. You can see the whole kitchen re-do in this post HERE.

Here's how we did it in one day...

Pre-prep work: Hubby took off the four inch granite back splash that was installed with our counter-tops. I patched the walls where the glue had pulled off some of the sheet-rock. Here in the above picture, you can see where I was playing with the tile design and you can also see the hand painted tile look that I did years ago in red and tan. It certainly was cheap and popular and it looked rather good with the red kitchen, but after 8 years like this, it was time to move away from a painted tile look to the real thing, don't you think?

I decided to try a tile backer called Bondera from Lowe's instead of using the messy mastic usually used with tiling.  This comes in a long sheet that is gray, with two sides very, very sticky but with a clear covering on each side to remove before sticking to the wall or tile. It's extremely easy to use and works great. I highly recommend this product. Yes, it's much more expensive but as my handyman would say, "it's worth the price when you consider the mess and clean-up time of the mastic."

Above, you can see that we had put on the backer Bondera. The beauty of this product, is that you can tile as quickly or slowly as you have time for. Just pull away the clear covering to expose the very sticky backer and apply tile.

Ah, the excitement...when my young-and-cute-handy-dandy-handyman applied the first tile!

I chose white subway tile because it is Timeless! I also believe that it will look good with any wall color that I use over the years. The black 'pencil' tile that I used was to add some style, tie-in to the black in my Quartz countertops and break up the sea of white subway tile.



I used a smaller version of the popular subway tile and it came in sheets instead of individual tiles. As long as we had no outlets, we could really go fast with the tiling. Also the tile sheets allowed us to withhold using spacers. Yeah, another time saver!

This product says to grout within 8 hours from tiling. So we decided to go ahead and grout that same day...that is why it took us until 9pm to finish the whole kitchen.I like the more streamlined look and clean look of grout that is the same color as the tile. Therefore, I used white grout.

All done. All beautiful!

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