Backsplash

A year ago my husband and I made a crazy—but wonderful—decision to build a house. We’d lived in our previous home for six years and everything was tailored to our likes. Pretty colors painted on the walls. Beautiful hardwoods in the family room. Furniture hand-selected by the two of us to go in every room. But we desired more space to spread out games on the floor to play with our children, more space in the yard to run around, more trees between us and our neighbors. We wanted land.

So we bought it.

Living in this house has been wonderful, but it doesn’t have pretty paint on the walls, and we certainly didn’t have enough furniture to fill the place. When you build a new home, they suggest you wait a year before painting. Something about nail pops and settlement cracks.

Who knew?

Well, technically I did know, but I didn’t realize living a year without color would make me feel BLAH.

Before Christmas my hubs asked me what I wanted, and I smiled and answered, “Backsplash.”

Yes, folks, my poor kitchen walls were the most painted in the whole house. Food, water—whatever—splashed and speckled the white walls. I wanted warmth, color . . . life, not chicken, pasta sauce, or anything else.

He laughed. There was no way Santa could creep down the chimney with care while carrying hundreds of pounds worth of natural stone, grout, caulk, etc. He’d make a huge mess.

So I filed my desire away for the next time the hubs asked what I wanted, but not for long. This past Friday he measured the kitchen, whipped out his “How to Tile” book, made plans, lists, and said, “Let’s go to Home Depot.”

Squeal!

We hit the road with smiles on our faces and ideas of grandeur in our heads. Three hours later we were the proud owners of lots of building materials and two very cranky daughters. A trip to McDonalds quieted their cries and my husband and I were free to start our DIY project—we just had to take down the Christmas lights first. Luckily what goes up usually comes down much quicker!

I won’t go into the gory details of how painstaking our kitchen project was, about how we worked tirelessly for hours and hours, measuring tiles, cutting tiles, cursing tiles, or about how the mastic adhesive fumes burned my nose, made my head hurt, and stuck to my fingers. You don’t really need to know how messy the muddy remnants from the wet saw made our driveway, our hands, the garage door, our clothes, and our faces. I’d tell you about how grout really hurt our skin when we realized it was easier to use our hands than that grout applicator thingy, but eh—how about I just show you the before and after pictures and let you decide how much work we put into it?!

Before






Now we still have to replace the outlet covers, but whatever, I’m labeling this project as finished!

After