After several months of just enjoying the house and not feeling like we have to spend every spare moment building, painting, sanding, staining...we're back to our Saturday routine of working on the house.
We have a pretty good system I think. We alternate weekends. One week John gets to choose what we work on and I'm the helper. The next Saturday, it's my turn.
This weekend was my turn and I had big plans.
Remember this...when I said that "eventually there will be tile..."
Well that time has come and you're invited to come along for the ride.
Sometimes we get these ideas about how to add small details that make our house unique (you know...other than the fact that it's made out of logs, has trees in the kitchen, and was built by amateurs). We also have some ideas about how not to spend money. This was one of those ideas.
We needed a back splash for the kitchen island. I was drawn to those strips of mosaic tile you can buy ready made. Like the trim in our shower.
We still had pieces of floor tile left and I thought, "How hard could it be to make our own?" Turns out that it's not that hard. Long and tedious but not hard.
We took a sledgehammer to the tile (and for the sake of full disclosure I'll add that my preferred method was throwing them down on the concrete driveway but John scoffed and made me use the sledgehammer.) We rolled the broken pieces around in this bucket to rough them up a bit.
I made a template of the space and set to work on putting the pieces together.
John adjusted electrical outlets and secured the cement wall board.
We taped off sections of the tile to speed up the actual application which worked like a charm.
We almost got away with not spending one more penny on this project. But what weekend home improvement project is complete without a last minute run to that place that rhymes with "Foam Repo". Turns out our old grout was a little too petrified.
So for a whopping $13 - Here's the finished product (almost anyway - it still needs to be washed and sealed).
Not too shabby!
We have a pretty good system I think. We alternate weekends. One week John gets to choose what we work on and I'm the helper. The next Saturday, it's my turn.
This weekend was my turn and I had big plans.
Remember this...when I said that "eventually there will be tile..."
Well that time has come and you're invited to come along for the ride.
Sometimes we get these ideas about how to add small details that make our house unique (you know...other than the fact that it's made out of logs, has trees in the kitchen, and was built by amateurs). We also have some ideas about how not to spend money. This was one of those ideas.
We needed a back splash for the kitchen island. I was drawn to those strips of mosaic tile you can buy ready made. Like the trim in our shower.
We still had pieces of floor tile left and I thought, "How hard could it be to make our own?" Turns out that it's not that hard. Long and tedious but not hard.
We took a sledgehammer to the tile (and for the sake of full disclosure I'll add that my preferred method was throwing them down on the concrete driveway but John scoffed and made me use the sledgehammer.) We rolled the broken pieces around in this bucket to rough them up a bit.
I made a template of the space and set to work on putting the pieces together.
John adjusted electrical outlets and secured the cement wall board.
We taped off sections of the tile to speed up the actual application which worked like a charm.
We almost got away with not spending one more penny on this project. But what weekend home improvement project is complete without a last minute run to that place that rhymes with "Foam Repo". Turns out our old grout was a little too petrified.
So for a whopping $13 - Here's the finished product (almost anyway - it still needs to be washed and sealed).
Not too shabby!
9:45 AM
That looks wicked awesome! (which is a good thing). Thanks for taking us through the process.
Tim "mosaic life" James
3:04 PM
wow that is realy cool
spring
8:55 PM
that is so cool! I love the price tag, too.
9:10 PM
It looks fabulous! :)
12:11 AM
That is so awesome! I am VERY impressed!
-Christi