Day 8 Project Kitchen Reface

So I did skip a day of work that was done....our Counter tops and sink got put it...I'll take some good pictures ASAP!

Yesterday Andrew, Dustin and myself got to work on the back splash. Originally we wanted something, semi-simple and modern. It would have looked something like this 

Then we went to my old work, and one of my favorite old co-workers, who is the company designer saw our kitchen and persuaded us to do something a little more challenging, traditional, and of course most costly. But I'm happy to get away from the modern look, and love what we have created so far!

Here is our before. The night before we went through all of our supplies and made sure we have everything we need, unwrapped and started to trim them down. 

 These are the pencil dome pieces that will separate the 2x2 and 1x1 pieces. We used that adhesive which was recommended instead of straight mortar that we would have to mix our self.

















Here are the pieces we selected. I'm not a huge natural rock fan, I think working with that company ad seeing the problems that could come from them made me not like it. But since the pieces are small I was willing to deal. We did run into the problem several times of the pieces cracking or breaking, and we would have to through that piece away.








 Here's our hypothetical lay out.

And here it it up! The pencils are only going on the ends. This one corner took us like 2 hours! it's all the little cuts to make the pencils fit right and the tiles to be cut down.












 Once we got rolling, the rest of the back didn't take long, until the next corner!














About 8 hours later, with a lunch break, and an electrician visit, we got this!












 And the cabinet doors back up!















Here's our before...prior to the grout getting put on!!! It's such a HUGE difference already! I can't be happier!!! And I'm super happy that we got to do a huge part of our kitchen! It feels so good to be able to say I did that!