Installing a Kitchen Backsplash

Now this was a fairly simple project, I promise! It took a weekend to install the tile and we just grouted today. We first applied mastic with a notched trowel. Oh wait, let me go back a step...it took us about a month to decide on the pattern. Several dry runs later we applied the mastic. So back to installation - mastic with a trowel, then the tile. We chose tumbled travertine as the main tile and an accent tile with glass. The accent tile came in a strip that we cut down to the size of the travertine. Jason handled all the cuts with the wet saw so I can't speak to that part.

Once the tile had set we grouted using a sanded grout (haystack was the color). I can offer a piece of advice here...add the water TO the grout mix instead of the other way around. That way if you have too much water you won't have to run to Home Depot and purchase another box of grout mix :) My bad!

We'll wait 3 days then seal the grout and tile. This is a VERY important step. It will save you hours of scrubbing grout wondering why the color has turned into a nasty shade of brown. This holds true for the floor tile too. It's good to clean and re-seal the grout every year or so.

In case you forgot about that lovely fruit tile, this is what the kitchen looked like before.

Master Bathroom Tile

After months of looking a tile it took all of a day for our tile guys to install it. We went with Daltile porcelain products on the floor and shower (10x20 on bottom and 10x10 on top). You can see a little of the shower floor in this picture. The river rocks were my splurge :)

The cubbies in the shower were built and in place before the tile was installed. We chose to use the accent tile there. Since we're both engineers we drew out different pattern options on graph paper. Crazy I know! But it made our decision easier when we could see it to scale. We used the 10x20 horizontal below the accent strip and the 10x10 on the diagional above. I'll post a picture of the floor later but we used the 10x20 there as well.

One thing that delayed tile installation was the unlevel floor. We ended up having to use a polymer self leveling system under the tile (which was an unexpected hit to the budget). Usually it doesn't matter if the floor is off because you can shim the vanity and make up the difference. But we had our vanity custom made like a piece of furniture so we couldn't shim.

The granite arrived the other day and the hole for the sink was cut out wrong so that will be replaced :( Anyway, this is what the vanity looks like.