Did You Say Tile?

My post yesterday may gave led you to conclude that the front door was all we got done this past weekend. In fact, the door was done two weekends ago, and we've been working on the slow and grueling task of painting cabinets. It's not the most fun part of the renovation.

Last week The Builder was being incredibly stubborn particular about the tile we need to replace in our master bedroom. You see when we ripped out the first vanity months ago, we discovered that when they re-tiled, they only retiled up to the vanity, not under it. And since we've had a change of plan on the bathroom vanities, this is a problem.

Let's go back a few weeks.  The Builder and I decided that do to time constraints, we're not going to build the vanities. I really wanted something custom, but by the time we build the vanity, order the doors with the over priced shipping! and order the granite top with the dual sinks, plus the hardware, it's a time consuming chore we don't have time for. We've decided on an alternative, which I will share in another post.  But we were at a local tile store looking for a match when we found a tile that would be perfect for a back splash in our kitchen.

A back splash that we hadn't any plans to do.

But it was perfect. And after a brief discussion, we decided we only needed to do small strip above the laminate back splash to extend it up. We were confident the additional six inches would be perfect. So we bought what we needed and ran a test strip today:

And...I hate it. The Builder wasn't to fond of it either. Looking through some of my favorite inspiration sites, I realized that modern kitchens have the tile going from the counter to the cabinet and behind the stove. Not a wimpy little strip like this.

So Sunday morning, we headed back to the tile store to get enough to do the back splash properly.

Here's where we went with:

Yeah, it's much better tiled all the way up. Of course, it added extra work to the scope of our project. We had bought new outlets because someone had painted over the ones that were there. But with the tile, we needed a different cover so they would be flush with the tile. And the tile has to be cut around the outlets. As do the light switches. So while these are on a sheet that make it easier to install, The Builder had to make a bunch of small cuts to get it all to look right.

So as the end of the weekend, here is where we are with the kitchen:

I can't even imagine why I thought a small strip of tile would look better than this! Even our kids were impressed. And impressing teenagers with another home renovation project is a hard thing to do! There are still a bunch of small cuts to do around the window, as well as one more strip of tile to go on the other side of the window, but once that's done, and we've grouted, all we'll have left to do is put the cabinet doors back on (that are all painted!), refresh the trim, and put everything back.

This project wasn't as fast, or as budget friendly, as I had planned it to be, but we're getting a lovely updated kitchen when it's done and we're super excited about it!