Getting Handy With It

We recently redid our kitchen. Our house is one of those 1930's-redid-in-the-60's-well-sort-of-redid-in-the-90's-sort-of-well Four Square two-story. It's a nice little house. The previous owners did some really big stuff, like putting on vinyl siding and painting it all so that when we moved in it was move-inable. But the colors were all shades of blue and green from Martha's catalog. The kitchen was the last thing we touched.

At one point, it had been a good idea to take of the doors while they repainted the cabinets, and I'll admit, when we moved in and for the first few years we lived here BK (Before Kids), we had it pretty organized, with neat utensils and hip boxes of food and packages that just looked cool. But after a while it just looked like clutter.

Luckily, we found the original doors in the garage, stripped them, painted them, put new hardware on them, had a new counter and sink installed then got to work tackling something we always wanted to do: mosaic tile.
We ordered the 12"x12" sheets from modwalls.com. They have great stuff as well as a bunch of eco-friendly stuff.

After attaching 1/16" cement board over the old plaster and lathe, the installation was pretty easy. Our friend let us use their tools and i just followed instructions the company sent combined with a bunch of info I found online.


After putting up the adhesive, you apply the tile, paper out and let it dry for a little bit. Then you just use a sponge, get it a little wet the peel the paper off when the glue is released. We found that by soaking it with the sponge, then letting it set for a few minutes, you can peel off bigger chunks and move it along faster


Even Nige had to get in on the action!

After you peel all the adhesive backer off, you apply the grout, let dry for twenty minutes, then wash it all off. And clean it up!

The finished product! We hung IKEA pots on the sides of the cabinets and are growing herbs. Here's our little IKEA catalog page. (Just don't look too close and find my mistakes!)