One of the projects we took on to prep our mother-in-law's condo for selling was to put a glass tile backsplash in her kitchen. We started by removing all the outlet covers and laying down brown paper to protect her countertops, as tiling is a messy business.
Admittedly, my hubby did the most of the tile laying. I couldn't let him have all the fun, though, and actually put up a couple of tiles myself.
The blank area above the stove is where the new rangehood will go. After all the tiling was put up, Dave started tiling the floor in the smaller bathroom, the one with the yellow 1980s laminate flooring. I did the grouting in the kitchen. This involved smearing gritty mud-like mortar over the tiles, a small section at a time, using a rubber float to push the goop into all the grooves. Then you need to wipe all the mortar off the tiles while leaving it in the joints between, going over the tiles several times to wipe off as much as possible before it dries. This took me almost five hours, but I'm proud of it.
One of my jobs in assisting Dave putting up the tile was cutting the little glass pieces to fill in around the electrical plugs and line up in the corners and edges. There's a tool they make especially for cutting glass tiles, go ahead and invest the $13 they want for it at Home Depot, it makes the job much easier. BTW, you have to pull all the plug and light outlets out of the wall and get extenders to raise the outlets over the tiles. Turn off that electricity first.
With the covers back on, it looks practically professional.
A small area of the finished product. I'll include the entire kitchen with new counters and backsplash in another post.
Most of my time and energy lately have been divided between helping fixing up the condo and attending to my mother-in-law, who is now residing in an assisted living facility. It's amazing how the summer has flown away. We are almost complete with her condo, though, and looking forward to beginning our own.
