Lessons Learned

If you guys have been keeping tabs on this little ole' blog then you know that we've been tiling our backsplash in the evenings. After the kids go to bed. Not the best way to do it, but its the time we had. I wanted to share with you guys today what I learned about tiling with this adventure.

Now this is not the first time I've tiled.  It's the 2nd time. It makes all the difference in the world. Ok. I'm lying it doesn't. This time round was definitely harder than the last time we tiled. Maybe it was because we were working with natural stone. Or it was on a wall rather than lying flat. Or it could be a combination of both things. Either way we learned a lot and I am going to share what we learned with you!

These lessons are in no particular order other than how I thought of them, so one is not more important than another.


Lesson 1
Slate is hard. Really hard. Its not hard if you drop it. It chips super easy, but if you're trying to cut it buy a tile saw. We were able to nip small sections off (read 1/4" sections of a corner) and it worked just fine, but it will never be a clean nip and forget about trying to score this crap and then snap it. Won't work. Buy a tile saw. We bought this little Skil Wet Tile Saw from Lowe's for $79 and its ah-maise-zing! Totally worth the cost and it made all of our cuts super easy. There were a lot of cuts.

Lesson 2
Lay out your design. I played with my tile design in Photoshop. My tiles were 3" x 6" so I made a rectangle that was the same size, then colored it with my tile colors and played with it until I was happy with what I had. I also had  my canvas size the same height as the wall we were doing the backsplash on and then just did a 4' run. After I figured out the design in Photoshop, I then laid the tiles out on my counter in the same design to see how I liked it in real life.

Lesson 3
Don't be afraid to screw up. It will happen, and if you accept this early on then when it happens, if it does, you won't be as discouraged by it. We have two tiles in our layout that are much smaller width wise than all of the rest of them. We don't know why it happened, but it did so we cut the tiles down to size and kept right on going.

Lesson 4
Use your common sense. We were told that we should use unsanded grout because of the marble, but its not polished marble; its tumbled and when I started researching ways to make our grouting experience less traumatic I discovered that its perfectly ok to use sanded grout. You may ask what the difference between sanded grout and unsanded grout is and the answer is there's sand in one and not the other. Feel free to smack me now. :) In all seriousness unsanded grout should be used in grout joints that are smaller than 1/8" and on tile that is polished (like marble or glass), sanded grout should be used on larger grout joints and on tiles that are not polished. Sanded grout adds more structural integrity, or so I've been told. :)

Lesson 5
Seal those natural stones! But a quality sealer and use it! Use it before you grout. The day before we originally were going to grout I had a dream (remember this is the 3 am night) and in my dream or maybe it was more of a vague memory, I was watching a DIY show (shocking, I know) and in the show the homeowners were tiling around their fireplace with large slate tiles. They started grouting the tiles with a black grout, but when it came time to clean off the grout it was not coming off all and the home owners ended up ruining their tile because they hadn't sealed it before hand. So seal those tiles!! We used a color enhancing sealer, and I love it, but there are sealers out there that do not enhance the colors of natural stone.

The picture on the left is not sealed, not color enhanced tiles, and the picture on the right is sealed and color enhanced. Love the results on the sealed tiles. :) Oh and by the time all is said and done....there will be 3 coats of sealer on those tiles. 

Lesson 6
Clean up and try to clean as you go. Obviously it is not always possible to clean up as you go all the time, but if you periodically stop and just pick an area to wipe down and pick up it will go so much better when you are done or stop for the night.

Lesson 7
Try to use the rubber float when grouting. Do not let your husband slap and rub the grout on with his hands! Now my hubs may or may not have done this, but if yours wants to do this....Don't let him! Its very hard to clean off all those tiles, because you will have to scrub that crap off the tiles, which is oh-so-easy on rough stone. The rubber float will not get all of the grout off the tiles, but it is much easier to clean up the grout that is left if you use that float!

Lesson 8
Caulk is your friend. Our lines are not perfect on any side. There is a dip behind the stove and the sides are a little wonky, but when we caulked the edges it became so much less noticeable. Not only that....caulk is easier to manipulate than grout, but its messy!

Lesson 9
Turn off the power!!!! The hubs and I may have been zapped a couple of times while working on this project. Its not that we weren't being careful, but things happen and its just safer to turn off that power. Although the biggest zap seems to have eased my carpal tunnel pain, I still do not suggest doing it. :)

Lesson 10
Have a helper and a system. Stephen and I were tag teaming the cuts that had to be made. I would mark out 20 or 30 cuts on tiles and then he would take the pile and start cutting. While he was doing that, I would pick up and clean up the areas that were done being tiled. Also while I was laying full tiles, Stephen would come behind me and mark the tiles that needed to be cut so by the time I finished laying the full tiles I could then just move on to the cut tiles, and he could focus on making patterns for the more intricate cuts, like around the window sill or the inside corner.

Well those are all the little lessons I learned. Still totally worth it to get this:

Have a great day guys!