Peter and I have been thinking about putting our house on the market for some time now. There have been a couple of projects looming over my head ever since we moved into our house. They're not difficult, I was just at a loss as to what to do with them. One such project was our kitchen back splash behind our stove. The old back splash was white tile that had been spray painted gold and then each tile had its own butterfly decal. Actually, these butterflies went around the entire 4" back splash around the kitchen, but since those tiles were still white and hadn't been spray painted, I was able to easily remove the butterflies with a razor blade. However, you can't just scratch off gold spray paint. You're probably thinking, why not just remove the tile? Well, the tile was actually put up behind the cabinets, so we were worried about fitting something in its place. Now you're thinking, okay, save your sanity and paint over the existing tile. All I kept thinking was, why bother? I'd rather do a different project that's easier to make up my mind on.
After much frustration at being finished with my kitchen except for the hideous back splash, I called in the reinforcements, aka Wendy Mullen, my sister-in-laws mother-in-law, and of course my sister-in-law, Meredith. She came and surveyed the atrocity and we decided a trip to the tile store was much needed. At the tile store we saw several things we liked, but tile is expensive and I am cheap, not a good combo. Wendy really wanted to take care of that back splash, but all I could think about was the tile border I needed around the upstairs tub. After about ten minutes in the regular-priced section we quickly turned our gaze to the liquidation section. It was there that we found these white, 6" hand-made ceramic tiles with a notch cut out of one corner. Meredith and Wendy ooed and ahhhed over the possibilities for my back splash. I said, thanks, ladies, but I'd really like to just focus on the bathroom. They frowned a bit and moved on. Wendy went and asked a guy working there what the charge was for the white tile. He told her it was 99 cents a square foot, which meant 25 cents each! I couldn't believe it! I only needed about 20 tiles, so at $5.00 for the set, I was sold. We found some cute 2" natural stone tiles to fill in the spaces where the tile was cut and also to double as a border in the bathroom. Only $5.99 a square foot for those, but you actually get 6 feet worth of border out of them, so I bought them and took home my spoils to show Peter.
By the end of the week I had made a trip to the tile cutter to saw off some extra corners for the design I wanted. I also had made a trip to Home Depot for some grout/adhesive. It took my about 15 minutes to take down the old tile, which was very therapeutic. It only took us 30 minutes to put up the new tile from start to finish. We did find out in the process that the whole for our stove is about half an inch offset from the opening in the cabinets about, but we made it work! I handed Peter the tile while he put it up. I was way too nervous to do it myself, but now I'd do it no problem because it was so easy! I'm really slapping myself for not taking a before picture, but I'm sure you can imagine gold spray paint with butterfly decals, right?
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