work for hire, as long as I get paid in pizza

Talking about how much I enjoy having the chance to work around the house kind of bit me in the ass this weekend; the in-laws are getting ready to sell their house and they asked if I wanted to put a backsplash in their kitchen. Being the good son in-law that I am I said yes, and that's the story of how I spent my Saturday and some of my Sunday putting tile up.

as blank spaces go it's not too huge

but there's plenty to work around

It's not a huge space, but they went with 3x6 tiles we had to buy individually, so both buying and getting started seemingly took an eternity out of my Saturday. They did do a lot of prep work though, so they had a pretty good idea of the number of tiles and bullnose tiles. Lots and lots of tiles.

so many tiles

Without a sheet I thought it was a little more stressful making sure the initial tiles were level, plus it was stressful doing it for someone else vs for my own kitchen, but once things got moving it was a pretty simple job. Even better, we picked up a dremel to cut the openings for outlets, and once we figured that out it was a much cleaner job than my last backsplash. I was a bit grumpy the late start meant I couldn't get it done in one day, but toward the end everyone came over (grandma had been watching the girl while the wife took the boy to a birthday party) for pizza so I couldn't be too crabby about it.

Saturday's quitting point

Day two went much quicker but still took longer than expected. My 90 minute estimate easily turned into twice that. More outlets and a window took me so much longer than two plain walls, pretty much reducing my weekend to the role of human pillow, which I am currently playing with the girl snoring away on me. Ah, dad-life.

The bright side is the wife knows how much I hate grout, so now that the tiles are on the wall my part of this project is done. The other bright side, other than getting a dremel out of this, is I'm wondering if I should build a console table for their entry way to help with staging. Always cool to find a reason to put a project together.