Kitchen Back Splash

Rae
by Rae
7 Materials
When I purchased a new refrigerator recently, we had to do some rearrangement of our cabinets to accommodate it ( it was quite a bit larger than the 80s era 'fridge it replaced) . Which brought to my attention, once again, a feature of my kitchen that I have never been happy about -- the useless little pass-through behind the stove -- and gave me the opportunity to do something about it -- installing an inset tile back splash.

This is what we had after leveling out all the cabinets to allow for the greater height of the new refrigerator. As you can see, the pass-through is really awkward and about the only purpose it serves is to collect grease.
I didn't want to tile the whole wall, so I marked out & removed the sheetrock from the area I was going to tile.
I cut a piece of 1/4" backer board to fit the area and set my tiles. I used mastic rather than thinset since mastic grips quicker and I didn't want to fight the tendency of tile sheets to 'slump' on vertical installations. After a couple of days, I sealed the mortar and the tile part was done.


But it left me with a bit of a conundrum ... the drywall in the kitchen was 5/8" which meant that the surface of the tile inset was just slightly raised. Normally, that would be solved with bull nose or pencil tiles around the edge but I couldn't find anything that I liked and wasn't cost prohibitive. Then I had an idea....
I had picked up 2 sticks of this trim just because I liked it. So, why not use it to trim the tile? It would work to cover the edges of the tile, wood is a little more forgiving than tile on an uneven surface and it would like great; problem solve. But, wait! I had another idea...
What if you tinted the trim with UnicornSpit to accentuate the details? Yeah, I get to play with Spit!
After hours on my knees with a fine paintbrush and some experimentation with colors, this is what I ended up with. Well, not quite because, yes , I had one more idea. There were little indentation in the trim that beg for some embellishment ( at least in my mind), So...
I added copper-clad BBs, which was an interesting process. After several false starts, I found an adhesive that would hold them if the wood flexed and dried clear. A couple more coats of spray on sealer to keep the copper from oxidizing and i was ready to put it all together
This is my end result. I'm really happy with the way this turned out.
Suggested materials:
  • 1/4" Hardie board   (Lowe's)
  • Mesh-backed mosaic tile sheets   (Home Depot)
  • Type 1 tile adhesive   (Lowe's)
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  2 questions
  • LibraryKAT LibraryKAT on Mar 19, 2017

    It looks really nice. What did you do to the other side of the wall?

  • Just Shirley Just Shirley on Mar 26, 2017
    Great job! Your trim made it all your own and sassy.
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