Since we bought our home, we have done A LOT of DIY projects. This one however, takes the cake. I truly underestimated this project. I thought, eh it will take a few hours. Wrong. 15 hours spanning over 2 days. It was exhausting, my fingers are cut up and sore, but oh so worth it.
This is a great project if you are okay with imperfections. Our backsplash is not perfect by any means. Some of the tiles are uneven, there are different size grout lines, etc. But we love it anyways, and love it more so that even though it didn't turn out perfect, we worked hard and did it ourselves!
Here is what you will need:
We spent a little less than $70 on everything to do our backsplash. Also I forgot to include the white caulk for around the sides. The tile cutter was $20 and well worth it. It helped cut our tiles and saved us a lot of time, and scissors. Also I should add that you may want to get a couple pair of scissors. When you have to cut tiny pieces to fit in tiny spaces, it makes it much easier. But buy cheap ones because they will probably break, we lost 2 pair. The grout float I honestly barely used. I just grouted with my hands and fingers because I found it to be easier.
The first thing we did was cut out tiles. The tiles were 12"x12" so we cut them in half, and then used the tile cutter to make 2" strips.
Then we made our pattern and set it out so that we would have a guide for when we started glueing the tiles to the wall.
We chose the Herringbone pattern for our tiles.
Next, I simply started at the corner of one of the wall and worked my way across following the pattern. I really wish I had better instructions for you here, but it is just a very time consuming process. There will be many pieces you have to cut to make fit, and many pieces you have to cut to fill in a gap. As you can see our tile is not perfect, there are still some gaps, wider grout lines, etc. But if you are okay with it not being perfect, this is a great project for cheap!
This was while we were in the process of filling in some of the gaps and adjusting some of the tiles.
Once you have all of your tiles glued to the wall using the adhesive in a caulk gun, you are ready to grout. We used the grout pictured, as it is already mixed and ready to go. We used the ENTIRE container, and are actually going to go back and get another container, to fill in a few gaps that we missed before. I just used my hands and fingers to fill the grout into the spaces. I let it sit for about 15 min on each section and then wiped it off with the grouting sponge. I let it sit for another 15 minutes, and then wiped it off again. Also just following the instructions on the container was helpful.
So there you have it guys! I hope my tutorial was easy to understand and follow. If you would like to see another tutorial, please go to this blog and check out her project. This was my inspiration to do the project myself and I am so happy with how it turned out!
Happy DIY-ing!
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