Tile Me! Tile Me!

I'm just turning into a natural homeowner... doing home improvement projects left and right! Ok, not really, because I can't do anything by myself. I always need some one else's expertise, help, opinion, etc. But I do feel the pride of home ownership and love working on my house.

Last week, I did two projects that were long overdue and I just needed to get it done while I still had the time off work and the friends to help. The first project was tiling a back splash on the kitchen walls. Every I would get crap on my walls, I could just hear them whispering to me "Tile me! Tile me!" So I did.

Here's what it looked like before I started:

My friend Ryan (my date for the Luau last year) likes to do home improvement projects as a hobby and he had some free time last week and offered to help me. There's NO WAY I could have done this without his help.

Ryan's a little camera shy, so this is the only picture he would let me get of him. He basically did everything... but really the only thing he really did all by himself was cutting the tile.

He taught me how to butter up the tile and stick it on the wall...

... and then how to do the grout.

So, I did do enough of this project to take ownership of it and say that I did the tile work in my kitchen... with A LOT of help from Ryan. He was so nice to not only give his time to do this, but to also be patient with me and teach me how to do it. Thanks Ryan! (He'll probably never read this... oh well!)

Anyway, Lowe's still had the same tiles that the previous owner used for the remodel, so I just bought enough to bring the back splash up the wall at a diagonal (Ryan's idea... more work, but so worth it!) and top of with the same decorative border tile that's above my stove. We worked on it for a couple hours a day for four days... I'd say it took us about 12 - 16 hours when all was said and done.

Oh, did you want to see the after pictures? Ok, here they are!

I LOVE my house! :)