The backsplash is now mounted and awaiting grout, and damn it looks good. Since I had never done tile before it was a bit of an adventure.
The tile is glass but isn't clear like most glass tile. The clear stuff looked nice, but at prices from $20-42 a sq ft it was just a bit too pricy. I ended up deciding on the 'art deco' blend from www.mosaictilesupplies.com. It was face mounted to paper, and was on sale for about $8 a sq ft. Score! After buying the tile, the thinset, grout and tools to install the tile it, the cost for the back splash was about $300.
The tile goes on the backsplash between the upper and lower cabinets, as well as the space between the elevated bar counters.
Lessons learned:
After applying thinset to the wall make sure to go over it many, many times with the 3/16 trowel, especially at the edges closest to the next piece of tile. If not, thinset shoots into the seams. Not good.Buy multiple sized trowels. The backsplash is a tight spot, so using a large trowel is efficient on wide open spaces but was a bit tight to get into some areas. This exacerbated the above issue.Use the tungsten carbide cutting wheel on the glass tile before nipping it. If not, about 50% of the glass tiles you are trying to nip will crack in ways you don't want.Apply about 4 applications of water to the paper, and wait about 5 minutes before pulling the paper off the tile. If not, you'll be pulling lots of tile off the wall and resetting them individually.Also, the foyer is now completely ripped out, with the electrical hanging beautifully from my ceiling... Now I need to figure out how to frame out the area and re-route the electrical.
