Thursday

 

The tile guy arrived this morning before 9:00 a.m. He finished placing the tile around 1:30. It's very difficult to get a good picture of the tile. It looks much better in person. It's quite dramatic. It looks different from every perspective and with every change in lighting. It even changes when you walk across the room. This picture above comes close to what it looks like in person or what we think it will look like with grout.

The grout has not yet been installed. That happens tomorrow, so now the tile has more white in the cracks than it will have later. I think we'll choose something gray, sort of like the lead you might see in stained glass. The grout guy will bring several samples of what he likes with it. (The tilers took four sample tiles to the grout guy so that he could make recommendations tomorrow.)

Some tiles are almost all silver with very little blue. 

In some ways, the tile looks like paint swatches.

The tiler ended up replacing 30 individual pickets due to flaws: chips, cracks, or botched coloring. He had one whole sheet left over and a few pickets. He said to save them in case a tile cracks or gets damaged.

The chrome end piece on the end is called a schluter. The proper way to end a run of tile is to go straight down from the bottom of the last upper cabinet. In fact, that's why our designer added this last upper cabinet. She wanted the backsplash to clear the sink area.

It's bold, definitely not boring. If anything, it makes the cabinets look even more sleek. But we are having to adjust to it. 

Do we like it? We're not sure. We had gotten used to the soft, pale look. It's also hard to tell with the brown paper as a counter top. Tile is the easiest thing to change if someone were to dislike it down the road. John says the backsplash helps to counter the outrageous faucet so that it's not the only eye-catching thing in the room. True that.

The tiler was very meticulous. He would cut out tiles he didn't like and replace them with different tiles.  He had a helper whose only job was cutting the tiles and bringing them to the tiler. Still, with two workers, it was a very slow process. John and I said we could have done it in under two hours. Not with the same results, mind you. We just lack the workers' patience.

My one project of the day was to re-hang the mirror over the laundry room sink. I got it on the second try--with three times the number of tools one would expect.

We had another warm day with a high of 80 degrees. We have gotten spoiled from our previous mild winters where we rarely had more than three or four winter days in a row. We've had long stretches of weather in the 50s with gloomy skies and rain. While we were out walking a neighbor gave John a driver to try out. The neighbor is 92 and has already given John a set of golf clubs.

Up next: the grouter comes to finish the backsplash, and we meet with our designer to review the primary bathroom renovation plans.