Kenric’s guide to tiling a kitchen backsplash – Part 3
December 26th, 2006 by Kenric
Here is how I tiled the kitchen backsplash in the home that I am currently living in. The kitchen is very large and contains alot more backsplash area than the previous condo example.
I went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of tiles that matched my countertop and cabinets. Ultimately, here is a tile combination that I picked. The brown tile is 6×6 and cost about $1/sf. The small green tiles are 2×2 and cost about $6/sf. The fancy border tiles were $8 a piece and measured 11″ long.
Before I start on a project, I measure out the area and determine what I need to buy. Below is a picture of what the backsplash looked like before. Notice the stack of tiles on the counter. Those are the ones that didn’t work out during my layout and design and will be returned to Home Depot.
Once I’ve determined the layout, I measure the area and determine what I need to buy. Below is a page from my journal that I write everything on. I’ll talk more about keeping a journal or notebook in a latter post. The advantage of writing everything in one spot is that you always have the information handy. This comes in real handy when you’re at the store and can’t remember a size or color of something you installed a year ago.
Based on the diagram I need to buy 104 brown tiles and 16 strips of the green tile. I also need to get spacers, grout and mortar. I needed to get 6 of the border tiles which is not shown in the diagram. Total cost of the tiles was about $100.
Below is a detail diagram of the tile layout. Notice that I used two different grout sizes.
The reason I did this is because the I wanted to fit exactly two brown tiles and one green tile within the height of the countertop. With 1/4″ grout lines there was a gap at the top of the tiles. With 3/8″ grout line the tiles wouldn’t fit. Nobody is ever going to notice if you keep it consistent.
The border was a little more difficult to design. I picked the 3″ border because it looked good and because it had a diagonal design making it easy to incorporate a 90 degree bend. You can see more closely at how the corner tiles come together.
Once you have a design all laid out, it’s just simple tile installation. Notice there are not many internal cuts. The only place I had to do them was at the electrical and phone outlets. Those were very small cuts that I was able to do with tile nippers.
The border tile was made of stone, but I used the natural breaks of the pattern so I didn’t have to make any cuts. I actually finished this entire tile job in under two hours after I had the layout finalized.
Here is the finished product.
Next time: Build a cool home theater for under $4,000.
Posted in Kitchen Tile Backsplashes | 11 Comments »
Stumble it!
Or, you can do what I do and ask father-in-law, who is a professional tile installer, do it for free (minus the materials, of course). LOL! ;-P
By Steve on Dec 27, 2006
Kenric has the urge every so often to work with his hands- he has to build or design something. I tell him he should have been a contractor! lol
By prlinkbiz on Dec 27, 2006
Part of the fun is the designing and building! I hire out the demo and garbage hauling and do the building. Sort of opposite of what the books tell you to do. LOL
By Kenric on Dec 27, 2006
The backsplash looks beautiful. You did a great job!
By Missy on Jan 1, 2007
We are retiling our kitchen back splash where some tiles have come off. Do we HAVE to get ALL the old adhesive off? That might damage some of the drywall and we’ll have to add the extra step of spackling the damaged areas. Is that just part of the retiling process? Thanks
By Leslie Harris on Mar 14, 2008
You don’t have to get it all off. Just make sure you get enough off so you have a good base to attach the new tiles on.
These tiles are decorative and won’t see much pressure or use, if any.
Personally, if I damaged the drywall I wouldnt even bother respackling it, just put the tile over it. Unless you have huge holes that is.
By Kenric on Mar 14, 2008
i love the plan!
By granite tile installation on Aug 20, 2008
Hi,
Ok–here’s my question. I pulled off my old tiles so I can put up a new tile backsplash. New granite is going in so I’m also going all the way down to the counter where there used to be a laminate backsplash. The old tiles look like they were put on with troweled construction adhesive if you can believe that. So I have 4″ of smooth drywall and then the rest is very ruff where some of the paper lifted and also has some construction adhesive on it. My question is should I tear out all the ruff stuff and replace with new or would mastic “mask” ALL of the flaws and slight variations from the roughness?
Thanks
By Hugh on Dec 17, 2008
I would scrape off as much of the rough stuff as possible. The new mastic would mask it, but those tiles would probably stick out more than the other tiles.
By Kenric on Dec 17, 2008
Ah….Always do it right–short cuts will always come back to bite you. A phrase my dad always told me and haunts me everytime I think about taking the easy way out….So I tore out the drywall and replaced it today. It actually turned out to be the easier way. I have a U shaped kitchen—about 30 linear feet and it only took three hours to tear out and put up new. I’ll be mudding it tomorrow. I’ll have a nice clean slate to start with and my conscience will be at ease…Thanks for the reply!
By Hugh on Dec 18, 2008
We’re planning on putting up a backsplash in our new kitchen. I would like to put a mosaic ceramic tile which is partly shiny and partly rough, behind the stove area. My husband thinks it would be difficult to keep clean. Any suggestions?
Sharon
By Sharon Tapscott on Jan 31, 2010