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.

The table survived!

The cover came off our patio table this week and I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it held up over the winter. Of course, no measurable snow over Jan/Feb for the first time in 150 years probably made for a pretty easy winter to survive but hey, you never know how things are going to work out.

Looking chilly in early March.

Hey hey, looks pretty good.

Seeing the table back out filled me with joy for the few days it wasn't raining this week. Unfortunately we were only able to eat out there once but hey, it is only April. There might be plenty of things wrong with the table, and lots I would do differently on another build, but it served us well last summer and I'm hopeful about getting at least one more out of it. A few coats of poly next weekend would probably go a long way towards helping with that too. There's always something to work on.

A spill and a scrap arm-table

I spilled a glass of water on myself the other night; I left it on the arm of my chair and forgot about it until I went to stand up and knocked it into my lap and then the floor. Which wasn't as bad as it might have been, considering it was a plastic cup and I usually have my tablet or laptop with me but this time I did not. But the thought of drenching my surface had me hunting through my scrap bin for something I could turn into a table.

Typical set up: balanced but dangerous

Lots of scrap to use.

Thankfully I still had a good chunk of 1x10 left over from the desk, so with a few quick measurements I had the dimensions for a top and two sides that would span a pair of chair and couch arms. I needed just over 13' to span the arms, and then split the leftover equally for the two sides. I added one last bit of scrap to make one side longer to hopefully keep things steady. Time will tell.

Glued & screwed

Lightly sanded

Stained and poly'd

One thing I didn't think about until I was already staining was that adding that third piece means the long arm has grains going two different ways. It's a neat enough seam that with some sanding you can't feel the difference, but you can definitely see it. And it has cut edges on the outside vs the other pieces having finished edges that match so the stain is darker on the outside bottom edges. It's a little unsightly but you don't really see it once it's on the couch.

Ta da! New phone pic too.

Nothing like a quick scrap project to scratch my project itch. I'm starting to wonder if I should try my hand at some joint-work eventually. For now, nothing wrong with the simplest solution. Pocket screws, a little sanding, stain, poly, and we're done. Will this survive the rigors of a living room that's home to two rambunctious little ones? I honestly don't know. But it can get stashed on the console table when no one is using it. I look forward to putting my coffee and surface on it during my next day off.