Our 2nd DIY Project: The Kitchen Backsplash

I now know why people pay for manual labor. It’s really hard work!

I have always dreamed of completing DIY projects once I purchased a house. Now that I own one, I’ve kept to that dream and my wife and I have already completed a few. This one, however, was our most ambitious yet: Installing a kitchen backsplash.

Putting up our backsplash wasn’t overly challenging from a technical perspective. As long as you can follow the steps and measure well, you won’t have too much trouble with the difficulty of the project. The real challenge, however, was in how tedious the work was. We’ve had previous blue-collar DIY experience in painting some rooms in the house, putting up our garage door opener, and mounting TVs, so DIY projects aren’t as new to us. However, deep inside I knew this was going to put things on a totally different level!

First, my wife and I would be cutting tiles, laying mortar, and taking various measurements throughout the project. I’ve never cut anything with a saw or laid any tile before so this would in essence be a brand new experience for us. Second, the effects are also much more permanent as it is near impossible to correct mistakes once the tile is on the wall and the mortar has dried. At least with wall mounts and paint you can fix your mistakes with relative ease. However, my wife and I decided that it would be a worthwhile experience both financially and emotionally. We stood to save a ton of money in labor by doing it ourselves, and wouldn’t it be awesome to say, “Hey… you see that awesome backsplash over there in the kitchen? Yeah, we did that ourselves.” Instant confidence booster.

With that, we began our project. First, we did some major reconnaissance. We watched something around 10-20 DIY YouTube videos to really understand what we were getting into. I won’t lie: when we saw the number of steps involved, we became a bit intimidated. Sanding the walls, washing the walls, applying mortar, cutting tile, laying tile… and this was only the halfway point of the job? Yikes! However, the more we watched and read, the more comfortable we began to feel about doing it.

When purchasing the materials, I realized we needed a good way to estimate the total cost of the project. So, I did what I do best: I built a budget spreadsheet in Excel. This thing was fancy enough to be able to calculate the amount of tiles needed for each of the walls plus the lower breakfast bar wall for any size tile. We then went to various home improvement and tile stores to get the best deals on the materials. Estimating costs was well worth the planning; we were only off by around $50, which is really good considering our inexperience with tile projects.

Once materials were purchased, it was time to get started. In order to use our free time most wisely, we started on a Friday evening after work and planned to work throughout the weekend. We didn’t schedule any other events that weekend; all our time was meant to be devoted to finishing this backsplash. At least, that’s what we intended…

Unfortunately, there was a huge obstacle that hindered our progress. I was on-call for work that weekend, and shortly after we began laying the mortar and tile, I found myself in the midst of a huge production issue that required my near full attention. Imagine me with a trowel in one hand and the phone in the other, switching from monitoring to mortar and back again! It was utterly insane. Suffice to say, we did not get much done the first night, even after 5 or so hours of work.

Sadly, the next day began much like the first. As soon as we got started again, my phone began ringing off the hook. This job did not want me to finish this project! Fortunately, my wife picked up the slack; she began laying down mortar and tile like a boss while I was busy running reports, addressing concerns on conference calls, and cutting tile. 14 grueling hours later, we were about 2/3 of the way completed with the project and utterly exhausted.

On Sunday, we worked 3 more hours to lay down the tile before we were truly done getting the tile on the wall. Fortunately, I did not receive any calls that day so I was able to return some of the extra tiles we purchased and picked up some additional supplies along the way. Once we got home, we began sealing the tile with tile sealant to prevent staining on our beautiful natural stone tile. We then needed to let the mortar dry overnight, so after 5-6 total hours of work, we called it a day.

Monday night was grout and caulk night. We came home from work to mix the grout and spread it throughout the spaces between tiles. We also had to add some caulk to the bottom row of tiles and the corners of the walls to keep water from building up. Water can really cause problems because water leads to mold and mold is hazardous to your health, so any possible effort to keep water out of dark, cool places is more than needed. The last thing you want is to have to tear down part or all of your beautiful new backsplash because there is mold and mildew growing behind your walls. All of that hard work and money… right down the drain.

On that note, it’s wise to also add grout sealant to any areas that might receive a lot of water (i.e. the sink area). Grout may seem pretty solid, but in reality it is a very porous sand mixture, allowing for water to seep through the cracks and encourage mold growth. So on Tuesday, as part of the finishing touches, we added grout sealant to the sink area and began the cleanup process. 30 hours later, we had a nice, new, professional-looking backsplash—for half the cost of having a professional do it for us!

Before:

After:

Now, was it worth all the effort? In our minds, yes it was. We gained a lot of experience and confidence, and although it was backbreaking work, my wife and I were doing it together, building up our relationship in the process. I’d even venture to say we had a pretty good time doing it. However, if you do not like manual labor, stay away! Have someone else put in the man-hours; I’m sure they’d do it in half the time and double the price so there is of course a trade-off.

All in all, a very successful effort. Now, time to enjoy this backsplash of ours…