Backsplash Part 2: The Nitty-Gritty

See part 1 of the madness here.

BACKSPLASH TILE INSTALLATION - STILL DAY 1

Step 1: Grab your mortar.  If using glass tile, make sure to choose the appropriate mortar so that it doesn't show through.  This is the one we used:

Step 2: Mix up the mortar with water according to the package directions.  We highly recommend using a drill attachment for this.  Mostly because it's fun, partly because we don't have muscles like these guys.

Step 3: Use the flat side of your trowel to spread the mortar over the wall, and apply pressure with the grooved side to even it and take off the excess.  This step was kind of like working with really thick frosting or peanut butter, so it's helpful to imagine you're frosting a really big, flat, cupcake - just kidding, it's not really that helpful. Work in big sections of the wall at a time, so you won't have to worry about spreading mortar around tiles already up on the wall. 

 Step 4: Apply the tile to the mortar, and press evenly across the whole area with a clean grout float. Adjust as needed.  Ignore weird bendy eye-trick caused by the random tile pattern - or is that just me?

Step 5: Keep going. 

Step 6: When all your tiles are in place, let the mortar set overnight.  Figure out the best way to dispose of the excess mortar and clean the bucket and then please let me know what that is.

DAY 2 - THE GROUT PARTY

Step 7: Invite friends over for dinner/hanging out with the assumption that you'll be finished grouting in about half an hour (...).

Step 8: Mix up your grout in a bucket with the mixer attachment, just like the mortar.  If using glass tile, be sure to use non-sanded grout as the sanded kind can scratch the tiles

Step 9: Apply the grout to the wall, pushing it in between every tile with the grout float.

Step 10: Keep going until all cracks are full, you are covered in grout, and your friends who arrived almost 2 hours ago are very hungry.

Step 11 (optional): Order a pizza.

Step 12: Wipe off excess grout.  Realistically, this is done in sections as you finish applying the grout so that it does not dry on the tile.  With each wipe, the sponge much be clean.  Here's the process:

-wring out sponge in bucket of clean water

-wipe once over tiles

-turn sponge over and wipe again with clean side

-wring out sponge in bucket

-repeat (changing the bucket water very frequently) for longer than you can possibly imagine

Bonus Tip: For pete's sake, save yourself some serious discomfort, and WEAR GLOVES. Literally, my nail beds were swollen and painful from all the wringing, and my skin and nails were incrusted with fine grout particles for almost a week. Take off your rings too, that's just some common sense I don't have.

When you can't handle the endless wiping anymore, thank your friends profusely for their patience and help, and call it a night.

Step 13: Let your grout dry for the instructed length of time.  If I remember correctly, ours was at least 48 hours.

There's one last installment of the gritty (grouty?) details coming up, and then the madness is over.  Yay, right?

Backsplash Part 1: Prep & Planning

When we found out that last Sunday's Home Depot workshop was backsplash tile installation, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally tackle the job we've had on tap for months.  We're currently working hard to get a lot of projects done before we host Thanksgiving and a house full of family, and this was the most intimidating of the bunch.  As it turned out, we were the only people to show up for the workshop, which worked fantastically in our favor.  The flooring expert let us practice spreading mortar, grouting, and answered all of our questions about how to handle cutting the tile, surrounding outlets, waterproofing, etc.  She also pulled all our supplies for us which was probably the most helpful - there are lots of different varieties of everything.

MOSAIC BACKSPLASH TILE INSTALLATION - DAY 1

Step 1: Clean up the kitchen in order to take a "before" picture that you're not only slightly embarrassed by.

Step 2: Clear off the countertops, and remove faceplates from electrical outlets.  Clean the wall to remove any grease residue.

Step 3: Realize you can no longer delay dealing with the weird metal backsplash sheet behind the stove.  Pull oven away from wall.

Say hello to the basement through some oversized holes in the floor.  Remove screws, pry away the lower part of the sheet from wall and, when you realize it's clearly secured at the top behind the hood as well, assess your options:

a) Attempt to take down and reinstall hood.

b) Somehow cut off the sheet just below hood (without damaging wall).

c) Reattach sheet to wall, and pretend none of this ever happened.

Obviously, you know which one we chose.

When reattaching the metal to the wall, do not drop the screw.  I repeat: DO NOT DROP THE SCREW.

Find replacement screw, and clean the bottom of the panel (since it's staying).  Push oven back to proper location.

Step 4: Map out your backsplash area on painters paper (or something similar).  Mark where you will have to make cuts for edges, outlet boxes, etc.

Bonus Tip from me: Even though this planning is long and arduous, do it all before you move on to applying the tile.  It is much harder to measure and diagram accurately when you're feeling the pressure of mortar drying out more and more with each passing minute.  Trust me, I know.

Step 5: Start planning the arrangement of your tiles on the paper.

Cut through the mesh backing with a blade to separate rows, and to cut off end tiles as needed.  Try to arrange the pieces so that the fewest cuts through whole tiles are needed (choosing a mosaic with square tiles would have made this much easier).  Remember to leave room for grout lines, and that your spacing doesn't have to be exact - it won't be noticeable in the end.

Step 6:  Introduce yourself to a wet-saw.  If you aren't lucky enough to have recently inherited a collection of power tools, either rent a saw from your neighborhood hardware store, or consider using tile-nippers like these. We highly recommend getting your hands on a wet-saw for this job, though.  Even with zero experience, it made cutting through the sheets of tile totally painless.

Fill the tray with water, turn the saw on, and run the sheet of tile through the blade front to back. Be sure to wear eye protection, and a breathing mask is a good idea too.

The guy at Home Depot who gave us the basic saw info told us that you couldn't actually cut yourself with a wet-saw blade.  Apparently you'll give your finger a nasty burn, but it's not as scary as a table saw blade.  Still, I don't feel great about how close Husband's hands are in the above photo.

Step 7:  Finish arranging the tiles on your plan.

We made the areas around the outlets look as seamless as possible by removing the half tiles marked above with Xs.  This way, we could add full uncut rows above and below the square and not have two half pieces next to each other.

Another Bonus Tip: If there are tiles glued on crooked(ly?) to the mesh, cut them off and replace them.  For some reason it didn't occur to us to do this, and they are still just as crooked on the wall now.  It bugs me.

Continue laying out tiles efficiently, until all areas are covered, then get psyched for the exciting part

To Be Continued...

Let There Be Trim!

You may remember our infamous door project from back in August. You may also remember that we left it grossly unfinished due to a complication with the trim not fitting on the hinge side of the door.

This past weekend, Husband and one of his colleagues finally had time to bust out the miter saw (yeah, we apparently own one of those too), and hide all those door-innards behind some snazzy new trim.  They cut out notches for the hinges to rest in, and nailed the trim to the wall.  After some spackling, sanding, and painting - the "new" lather, rinse, repeat - the door looks as good as new (which it ought to, because it is)!

Except for the small gaps between the trim and baseboard, and shelf bracket on your right side, of course.  The baseboard will be filled eventually, but the shelf bracket is staying as-is.  Honestly, I like that it's slightly imperfect - a constant reminder of our very first project, gone awry. 

A Frame Is Not a Frame

All I wanted to do was hang some pictures on the wall.

NIGHTMARES IN PHOTO FRAMING

1.  Take advantage of a Shutterfly sale and free shipping coupon code, and order some honeymoon & wedding prints.  Pat myself on the back for scoring such a deal.

2.  Head to IKEA to buy frames.  On a Saturday, because I'm out of my mind.

3.  Select the RIBBA series because of the flexibility of their wide range of sizes (insert ominous foreshadowing music here).

source

4. Bring them home and successfully frame the 8x10 photo.

5.  Wonder why the 11x14 photo is too small.  Realize I didn't take the measurements seriously when they said 11 3/4" x 15 3/4".  Whine a little bit, but decide I can live with this.

personal photos

 6.  Optimistically, move on to the other 11x14.

personal photos

7. Begin to get a really bad feeling about this whole project.  Have a meltdown over my own disattention to detail, and IKEA's european frame sizes.

8.  The next day, head to Michael's and pick up an 11x14 mat.

9.  Cut the mat to size because it's too big for the frame.

10.  Discover that the new mat is not at all the same color as the IKEA original.  Whine some more, stomp around for a bit.

11.  Head back to Michael's and buy a matching 8x10 mat.  Discover that the new mat is too small for the frame.

12.  Decide to throw in the towel on this whole project.

13.  Scoff at husband's suggestion to spray paint one of the mats.

14.  Get out the spray paint.

15.  Let dry overnight.  Return the mat to the frame, and pretend to be surprised when the color has not changed at all.

16.  Decide I can't handle the torment of this project anymore.  Have a glass of wine.  Leave the different color mats as they are.

17.  One week later, head back to IKEA and buy another "almost 11X14" frame for the 3rd photo and switch out the mat for a new one (as before).

18.  Use frame inserts to plan wall arrangement.

19. HANG PHOTOS

(please ignore the terribly grainy photo, and the fact that the lower frame is slightly crooked - thanks.)

Start to finish, this ordeal took more than 2 weeks, and at least 2 years off my life.  It's a good thing I really love those photos.

If anyone asks, the mats appear to be different colors because of the the way the lamp light is hitting them.  Are we clear?

Just 16 Hours and a Can of Paint

When last we spoke about the kitchen it was looking like this:

But messier in real life.

Painting the cabinets had been our plan all along, but somewhere along the way I realized that it would be a big, agonizing, pain in the butt and, as it turns out, I really didn't want to do it.  So we bought some backsplash tile (which then sat in the garage for two months), and painstakingly chose a paint color for the walls that we hoped would compliment the gray cabinets as they were.  Well, we know how that theory worked out...with me deciding to paint the cabinets after all.

I walked past that intimidating can of paint every day for weeks and weeks until one Thursday afternoon when very suddenly, around 4:30pm, motivation struck like lightning.  I slapped some paint on the inside of one of the doors "just to see" , but never really stopped to "see" - which is probably a good thing, because the color of the paint while wet was less than appealing...

  

I kept painting into that night, slept, then painted all day and into the next night without stopping (I honestly don't know if I even used the restroom - it was like one of those times you pull into your driveway and can't even remember driving home).  When there was nothing left to paint, the kitchen looked like this:

A total warzone.

We lived like that without closing the doors and drawers for almost a week to try and avoid the thick paint sticking to itself and chipping, but it did anyway.  Now, I can't seem to get the motivation back to do the touch ups.

My fresh shelf liners look even better now

I would really be remiss if I didn't mention our relic of a dishwasher here, since it adds such a lovely touch to the kitchen.  The inspector found a stamp that dates it to 1972 (!!), and the repairman sent from the home warranty company when it broke immediately after we moved in told us that it's the Cadillac of dishwashers.  Great.  I was really hoping it would break beyond repair before our year warranty is up.

So, what's the verdict?  Ultimately, the cabinets are just old fashioned.  There isn't much I can do about that.  I don't know if painting them is an "update", but it's a huge change and we are really happy with it.

Yay!

My First Date with Craig

A few weeks before our wedding earlier this year, I was completely tired of planning it and excited to move on to furnishing and decorating our prospective (now actual) house.  Of course, now that I'm totally exhausted by the house, I really miss planning the wedding...grass is always greener, huh? Anyway, I was trolling craigslist for furniture, and was intrigued by a listing for a solid wood china cabinet for $100.  I had never contacted anyone regarding a craigslist post before, and was really nervous to send a stranger my phone number, didn't know what the procedure was, or what questions to ask, and needed some encouragement to follow through, but I am SO glad that I did.

The seller was a really sweet girl, who was making room for a new dining set she had already purchased, and so just happened to have the matching dining table and 6 chairs available as well.  Super convenient and also, I loved them!  She held all the furniture for us until the weekend when we could come back with a truck (and sweetly deducted the cost of the truck from her asking price - $100 for the table and chairs as well).  The ride home was slightly iffy, and we had to make quite an urgent pit stop after coming dangerously close to losing the table.  

Here's Husband re-securing our cargo:

That photo still cracks me up because we were 3 weeks away from our wedding, buying a roomful of furniture for a house that we didn't even own yet.

Our haul lived at Mum's house for weeks and weeks until we actually moved into the house.  Then, finally, we got to see it in our freshly painted dining room!

The chairs are painted brown because the seller was planning on rehabbing the whole set before she found her new one.  She gave me the paint just in case I needed touchups, or wanted to finish the job she started.  I don't, though.  I have another in the works. You'll also notice the lack of cushions on the chairs.  We have them - they're just awaiting their transformation in the garage at the moment.

The wine tower in the corner was a wedding gift (thank you!), the rug was on clearance at Bed, Bath & Beyond, and the bowl on the table is from IKEA.

And that is the story of how we furnished the dining room for under $200.

Moving Day

This is a boring post with photos of boxes. Excited? Me too.

Two months ago we moved.  

Since we did not start packing very far in advance of the move, we were up very late the night before.

 Somehow, we managed to have enough stuff to fill this truck three times.

But the last trip was my favorite, because I think this shot of the table saw is pretty classy.

And I'm fairly certain that the boxes will never actually all be unpacked, and that my life will look somewhat like this forever.

 Sigh.  The end.