We started out with generic builder grade walls but after 4 years of living with it, the awful mess that trying to clean drywall (even semi-gloss painted drywall) behind a stovetop, we finally gave in. After a few months of searching, we found this lovely tile and trim at Lowe's of all places. We love that it is close in texture to the floor of the kitchen although the colors are slightly different. Close enough to go together, but far enough apart not to be too matchy-matchy:
So once we had the tile, I did some layout work. But, between one thing and another, a few months passed before I finally got down to business. I tried buying a tile cutting blade for my jigsaw. No dice. The blade was nowhere near hard enough to cut the ceramic tile. So I rented a wet saw from Home Depot for a day and was able to cut and put up the backsplash and ended up with:
The hardest part was doing cutouts for the outlets, phone plugs, etc. It took a little planning so that all of those would end up on the edge of at least one tile so that I could do the cutouts from the edges. I have no idea how to do the cutouts in the middle of a tile. It's amazing how easy this was with the wet tile saw. I was able to do the whole wall in about 4 hours and the 8 hour rental was not that expensive. We loved how it turned out. The only problem was that we also had the other side of the kitchen which now looked unmatched:
So a few weeks later, we wanted to do the other side. But in the months that it took me to do the first side, our tile had been discontinued. Boo! Hiss! I hunted around and was able to find a great store in Wheaton, the Wheaton Tile Center, and they were able to hunt down 5 boxes of this discontinued tile in some warehouse somewhere. They ordered 2 boxes for us and we were back in business. So, one more day trip to Home Depot to rent the wet tile saw and we ended up with:
And now the whole kitchen matches. We love the final result.
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