Kitchen Progress Update - 9-1-2010

Well, we are making progress in the kitchen, once again! Below you can see the kitchen soon after we moved in. The paint color was a dull, faded and dingy yellow, the cabinets were old wood cabinets with doors that didn't shut and drawers that were on those old wooden runners. The backsplash and counters were that weird sheet vinyl stuff and the floors...well...can't even begin to describe how awful they are...weird linoleum that looks like vomit, except were it's worn and water-damaged, there it is black...lovely!


Kitchen soon after moving in, dingy paint, impractical cabinets and linoleum for days, you can see our paint samples on the wall

We painted first (white trim, red walls) and that was followed this winter by the upper and lower cabinets, along with a new sink and (drumroll) a DISHWASHER!!! I don't know how we could have afforded it before Ikea came to town. Even though it took about a month, we saved over $1,000 by installing everything ourselves. This spring, we finally got around to putting in the cabinets above the stove (a used gas stove which we found for $75 on Craigslist) and the microwave/vent/light/hood.


Kitchen this spring, with all the cabinets finally installed!

We have been debating for a while what to do with the floors and backsplash. Honestly, I would like to paint the floors for the time being...anything to cover up the horrible linoleum, but we decided to just bite the bullet and tile everything. We settle on white subway tile for the backsplash and white chicken-wire tile (hex tile) for the floors (with a black border).


Here is the tile we chose, white 3x6 subway tile and 1x6 trim

The hardest part (as seems to be the case for me most of the time) was trying to figure out the best way to start...we measured things, pre-cut most of the pieces we could and then dove in. Cutting the odd shapes to fit around outlets, the sink and window frames was the hardest part, and we ended up wasting A LOT of tile...I guess that's why you always get more than you think you'll need.

It's true what they say, measure twice, cut once...although we still ended up cutting 4-5 times

Using the cutter looks so easy on all the videos I watched, but was not super-accurate...we had a lot of tiles that were just a little too short or too long...or not quite even.


The tile-cutter, my nemesis...and wasted tile pieces. We figured we'd save them for now, however, as they may be the right size for future odd spaces on other parts of the wall.

Putting on the thin-set was pretty straight-forward, you slather it on, smooth it out and then use the notched side of the trowel to "score" it...making lots of little groves in the thin-set. Then you basically start putting the tiles in place, using the little plastic spacers to maintain proper, well, spacing! It's kind of tedious when you are working on areas with lots of odd cut-outs and what-not, but once you are on open, bare wall, you can go pretty quickly, which is good, because the thin-set starts to harden pretty quickly...I think you are only supposed to spread out 15' at a time to make sure it doesn't harden before you're done.

Here are the tiles set in the thin-set, with spacers to keep them aligned correctly.


And here we are...VOILA! We still have to mortar them in, but will probably wait until next weekend to do that part...we're thinking of using white mortar. We're a little nervous that dark mortar will just draw attention to any unevenness in spacing :-) After that, we'll do the tiling behind and above the stove and then, finally, we'll address the floor. Whew!