The following weekend I planned on finishing the tiling of the backsplash. Even though the amount of tiling would be almost twice as much as my first run, I thought I learned a lot and could move through the job faster.
Saturday was again spent moving stuff off the counters, taping, installing the edging and laying out the tiles. Everything was going smoothly, and I was done before we went grocery shopping, but not without drama.
First, I noticed the countertops were not level. The one by the sink was, but the desk was unlevel. The upper cabinet above the desk was also unlevel. So, with that combination, the space between the countertops and upper cabinets was one-quarter inch greater on the right side. The tiles needed to be cut on an angle for all eyes to see. I would try to figure something out to minimize it.
Secondly, as I was laying out the tiles, I discovered I was short 5 sheets. I tried to use as much as the cut sheets on the desk wall as possible, but the rest of the tile did not look like 5 sheets of tile. Maybe I just mis-measured. Now, I needed to find a store that had 5 sheets in stock. Efiwym, my wife suggested that we buy a box of 10, just in case. We could always return the unused ones. Good idea, but now I needed to find a store with 10 in stock, and I did.
Before we went grocery shopping, we went to save big money. We got 10 sheets of tile and a 5-gallon bucket, because I wanted to fill it with water to try to keep myself, the tile and everything else clean and not full of thin set.
When I got home, I proceeded to layout the tile again to make sure I had enough, which I should have. I had the tiles on the floor in the family room, but I did not give me enough space, so the stove wall of tiles and the refrigerator wall of tiles overlapped each other. I decided to separate the tiles out and, like a puzzle, I needed to put them back together again. What a debacle! I finally figured it out, or at least I thought I did, because now I need to use 8 of the tile sheets instead of 5.
I went back and forth from the drawing of the dimensions I had for the kitchen to measuring the tiles I laid out on the floor. Finally, I found out I had too many tile sheets for the stove area. I removed three full sheets, (there they were), and it all worked out. I wished I laid out the tiles last week. I think this will really save time tomorrow. I was ready for tomorrow.