This weekend past, we decided to put up a kitchen backsplash. I went to the local Home Depot and picked out some tiles and supplies, which cost less than I'd thought, and started working on it on Sunday morning.
This is how it started off - I moved things out of the way, laid down some newspaper, and sandpapered the wall a bit to let the wall give a bit more grip for the mortar adhesive backing.
I have a cement mixer attachment for my drill, that I'd originally bought to mix tar for my driveway. It made short work of mixing the mortar, and the actual process of attaching everything to the wall went pretty smoothly.
Here's the tile cutter - I had to get pretty handy with it to cut 3/16th inch strips of tile for the top edge of the backsplash. I had hoped that the tile would fit exactly after allowing for the spacing, but no such luck.
I had to clip a few tiles so that it would fit around the power sockets and phone socket. This nipper tool was actually more difficult to get the hang of than the tile cutter. I ended up cheating a bit - instead of cutting L-shaped pieces, I cut 2 rectangles instead. Not really too noticeable.
All the tiles are up at this point - I used the extras to extend the backsplash down a bit on the back of the stove - I didn't go all the way down since, well, it's not a part of the wall that we ever see.
After the tiles had some time to set, I mixed up the grout and applied it. These pictures are after it's been applied and the excess had been wiped off with a wet sponge. The lighting is a little bad, it was late and I had forgotten to turn the flash on.
Once the grout had some time to start drying, I applied caulk to the outside edges at the right end and the area behind the stove.
Here is the finished result, as per the top of the post. :DIt was kind of a tiring job, especially since the space I could work in was rather limited. I whacked my head on the range hood a couple of times pretty hard as well, but oh well. The results are pretty decent for something we suddenly decided on, on the weekend. 4 hours for the tile cutting and setting in the daytime, and an hour for the grouting in the evening, and a little more time for caulking and putting everything back together before the day was over. The only part I'd not thought of was the power sockets becoming inset on the wall after the tile was added, but all I had to do was remount the sockets and it turned out all right.
Only thing left to do is to put a sealant on the grout in a few days, and it'll be complete.
Cheers,
Allen.
