Kitchen Work (A couple steps closer)

This weekend I made a strong push to get the kitchen backsplash tiled. And tonight I was planning to blog about it, but instead I had to spend an hour dinking around with my blogger account. The details of that are frustrating but irrelevant. So much for a quick blog post and off to bed.

Friday after work I decided I wanted to do this since I've been procrastinating it for some time. (It's even on my "Procrastination List"--an actual thing--not made up.) So we headed up to Home Depot so I could buy the rest of the material and rent the tile saw.

Then I went home, put the kids to bed, and started cutting. The first two pictures were taken during this time while I was cutting the tiles and laying them out on the garage floor. Chelsea was good enough to clear off the counters and get it all ready for me to work. It's kind of an adventure when you close the kitchen for two days.

For this project I decided to go with SimpleMat, a product made by Custom Building Products. When I did the bathroom, I used a product called Bondera that worked in a similar way. I was also using Fusion Pro grout (another one from Custom Building Products), which is the same grout I used on the floor with good success. The SimpleMat was easy to set up, although it was not very easy to handle while cutting since it is very sticky. Of course, I wouldn't want it any less sticky. Don't be ridiculous.

This product is designed to be grouted immediately after placing the tile. This makes for a long day, but also means you can get it done in one day.

I added some extra tape support for the nosing on the top just to make sure it would stay put while I grouted.

One difficult thing about the Fusion Pro grout is that it dries pretty fast. Being that it's an epoxy grout, this can mean you won't be able to get it all the way off. This back corner was my first area. It didn't go well at first. Fortunately, I was able to get it to clean up a little afterward with some haze remover and the handy Dremel Multimax.

Having done a small amount of tile wherein I relied heavily on the Multimax, I'm left to wonder how tile work was done before they were invented. I cleaned up the excess using the grout removal tool and then put a scotch-brite pad wetted with haze remover on the sanding attachment. It improved matters tremendously.

Here it is after all the grouting and cleanup was done. In this picture I still had to caulk, but it's almost there.

Here are some detail shots after the final caulking. I'm pleased with the result.

Now my procrastination list is down by one.