Before.
Middle. Some fancy maneuvering.
The paper David is cutting is the most amazing invention for tiling a back splash. It takes out the mess of the thin set. It also cuts down on the drying time so you can get the job done faster.
Tile placed.
Finished product.
What you need:
- Pick your tile. We used square foot sheets of the little tiles and we chose some ceramic tiles for the decorative area above the stove.
- Simplemat. If you want to do it the easy, fast way then simplemat is the way to go. It's a double sticky mat that you cut, stick to the wall and then the other side has even better sticky stuff that the tiles adhere to. They stick really well. I was a little skeptical at first but it worked great and i would recommend it to anyone.
- Grout. They make simplegrout that is premixed and is made to go with the simplemat.
- Sponge.
- Grout applicator (not sure what it's called but it's a rubber rectangle with a handle basically.
- Caulk to match your grout.
- Scissors to cut your simplemat to size.
How you do it :
- Cut and apply your simplemat. There are directions on the mat. Just read those. Not difficult at all.
- After you've applied the mat it's time to apply the tile. If you are doing a decorative area do that first. The way we did it was to figure out how many rows of the little tiles down we wanted the decorative thing. That way we new that there wouldn't be too much or too little room above the decorative thing. Then work over the rest of the area. Apply tile from the bottom up (we didn't do that and we had to add a good amount of caulk. It doesn't look terrible but it would have looked better if there was more caulk a the top than the bottom.)
- Apply the grout. This was by far the worst part. It was very difficult. It's a weird consistency to work with. You just basically have to figure out what way works for you and just get it on.
- Clean the tile. If there are two of you, have one person clean the excess grout while the other continues grouting. Don't scrub too hard but try to get all the little grout pieces off the tile otherwise it's a real pain when they dry. If you don't get it all off or there is a film don't worry you'll have to deep clean it no matter what after the grout has set all the way.
- Let set 4 hours.
- Clean the tiles. (We had to scrub pretty hard with some kitchen cleaner to get all the film off.)
- Let set 24 more hours.
- Caulk.
- Enjoy your lovely kitchen.
