adventures in tiling

Have you ever had a home project that you were utterly intimidated by? I'm really not sure why I ever thought that tiling the backsplash of our kitchen was a good idea. I never, ever thought I would be the one tiling something in our house, and I don't want to do it again. I think it's a skilled position - even skilled tilers can screw it up, so my inexperienced self could really screw it up.

Pre- that picture falling

When we did our bathroom remodel, we told ourselves that we would put up a backsplash. The wall behind the vanity is concaved because of where the piping is (I don't remember exactly why), so there's a little tiny gap behind the vanity in the center. To keep things clean, I thought we should add a small backsplash. This would also serve to protect our brand-new drywall in there. A month or two ago, we found penny round glass tiles half off/on clearance at Lowe's, and decided to go for it. We paid $10 for the tile, and I already had grout. The grout I have is actually able to be used as the mounting and the grouting... which I'm sure means it's not the best quality, but it's just a backsplash. Right?

Pre-tile

It was really hard to put the grout stuff behind where the faucet is. In retrospect, we should've removed it. I had issues trying to get the tile to "stick" because of that (or getting enough stuff behind the tile).

Pre-grout

Once it had time to dry, I took off the adhesive lining (like a sheet of thick packing tape) that held the tile together. It was nice to have when I was putting the tile up because it made putting the tile up a breeze, but when I pulled it off, it pulled off about 10-15 of the tiles. Not too bad, and probably a plus because I thought of it as identifying weaknesses that I could fix. Better now than in a month when it just falls off, right?

You have to wait 24-36 hours to put the grout in, so since I had waited 18 hours to remove the sticky stuff and had to re-adhere some tiles, I waited another day to add the grout. This part made me nervous because I wasn't sure how pretty I could really make this look, and, with most of my projects, I dove in before doing adequate research.

I tried using one of those tiling tools that's meant to smooth out the grout but after I was sufficiently afraid of scraping the glass tiles, I just got in there with my fingers and wiped the grout across it and worked the grout into the cracks of all those little tiles.

Grouted

Then I took a couple of wet junk towels (should have used a damp, large sponge) and wiped it down, followed by wiping with a couple of dry ones. Tomorrow, when it dries, I'll take another wet towel and wipe down any grout on the tile that I may have missed.

Before:

After:

This project turned out much better than I anticipated. What's next on my list? Painting with a sprayer. I need to paint some exterior wood and some 12-odd doors in our house. I'm also dreading this one so... any volunteers?

xo,

P.S: Check out other guest bathroom posts here.