Arctic Ice Backsplash…Finally!

It was approximately one year ago that we started renovating our kitchen. Slowly but surely we have chipped away at our list of projects to complete and last weekend we moved forward another step towards fulfilling phase 1 of the kitchen remodel. Since the first day we painted the kitchen, we had our eyes set on a glass mosaic tile from Home Depot called “Arctic Ice.” At about $9/sq. foot we were hesitant to commit. We also dabbled with the idea of doing some standard 3×6″ subway tiles. In fact, I purchased some off of Craigslist but ended up not liking them <~~~they had a matte finish versus a nice glossy finish (maybe we can find another use for them somewhere else?).

Anyways, we finally took the plunge on purchasing the tile and other supplies needed and this last weekend I had my first experience with tile. Overall, I liked tiling. It was definitely more time consuming that I had anticipated. I’m also still undecided about my opinion on the glass mosaic tile. It was hard for me to have a perfect cut especially on the rows that I had to rip down in size. Either the glass would chip and the color was cut sharp or the glass would be cut clean and the color would rip rough.

Long story short, I watched a ton of videos on Youtube for how to install a kitch backsplash and followed their directions to a “t.” The biggest thing that I learned was that the tile spacers that I got from Home Depot didn’t really make sense to me.

I stopped by Lowe’s after the project and really liked the design of their tile spacers;

Should of, could of, would of

I let the tile dry for over 24 hours and then grouted it all. This was a lot messier than I envisioned and it was also a lot harder to remove the haze and to sponge it down as people make it out to be (I think because it was a glass tile and shows up a little easier).

After about 3 days, I applied a grout sealer. For that, I used a spray can of grout sealer and sprayed all the grout lines. After 5-10 minutes I used a dry cloth to wipe down the tiles.

Also while I had the countertops cleared off, I decided to take advanatage of the clear space and sand down the wooden countertops and apply 4 new coats of General Arm-R-Seal to them.

In the pictures it doesn’t look like much of a change but it definitely “feels” more finished now. And we won’t have to worry about splashing water out of our farmhouse sink onto the drywall any more.