A tile back splash in a kitchen is truly elegant. The luxuriousness of tile can make the difference between an ordinary kitchen and a spectacular one.
And a tile back splash is so easy to maintain, just take a rag and wipe it down. So a while back when a friend of mine was giving his house a makeover one of the things on his “to do” list was to tile the back splash in the kitchen.Since Bob is not as experienced with home improvement as I am, but wanted to do the job himself he asked me if I could give him a hand, just to make sure that he was doing the job right. Being a handyman that really enjoys working with tile I said “no problem.”
Now this job was relatively easy because there was nothing to demo meaning there was no existing back splash tp remove. Bob and his wife had just ordered new marble counter tops, but not the back splash knowing that they wanted to install their own. When the marble countertops were installed both the countertops and back splash were removed. More often than not you will have to remove the old back splash and since it can be a lot of extra work I will save the “how to” for another post.
My friend choose a beautiful six by six inch tile which he previously picked up so we gathered all of the remaining materials and got ready to work. Here is the list of the tools and supplies that we needed.
Tile adhesive
Grout
Snap cutter or a wet saw
Tile Nippers
Notched trowel
Marking pencil
Tape measure
Rubber float
Sponge
Towel
Bucket
Then once we had everything that we needed it was time to get to work.
Whenever you install tile the most important step is planning – I cannot over emphasis this. Once the tile has been set in place the last thing that you want to do is have to move it. So plan, plan, plan!!!
After removing all the switch plate covers, it was time to measure to see exactly how we were going to layout the tile. You want to place as many whole tiles as possible snce small pieces are difficult to cut.
Next we made sure that the counter tops were level and that the walls were in reasonably good condition. Make sure that there aren’t any holes in the wall, if there are they need to be repaired.
Holding the trowel on a 30 degree angle Bob spread a thin layer of adhesive on the wall. Then one by one, using a slight twisting motion he pressed each tile into place making sure that he carefully followed the plan that we set up in step one. Smaller tiles had to be cut and we made sure to wipe away any adhesive that was forced out as he pressed the tiles into place.
After allowing the adhesive to dry for 24 hours we were able to grout. We followed the manufacturer’s directions which instructed us to mix the grout with water until it was the same consistency as peanut butter. Then using a rubber float we worked the grout into the spaces between the tiles always working on a 45 degree angle. After allowing the grout to dry overnight we removed the slight haze that formed over the tiles with a towel.
Several days later we sealed the grout and proceeded to sit back and enjoyed our accomplishment.
