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Kitchen Work

This morning Vince was ready to start the tile backsplash behind the stove. Oh, yes! I was glad he mentioned it without me hounding him about it.

I love my husband but we do not work well together. We’re so different. Vince wants to think about everything, draw it out. If there are three ways to do something, he wants to come up with six ways, then draw it out, calculate to see which way is best, debate all the pros and cons of each way. I want to slap it up there and be done. He’s an engineer and he’s way smarter than I am but I think from all the quilting, the math comes easy to me. Once we were measuring something. One thing was like 3 – 3/8 plus 3 -1/2. I said 6-7/8. Not good enough. He had to write it out. 3 – 3/8 plus 3 – 1/2, then extend that to be 3-4/8. When he said 6 -7/8, I wanted to say . . I could have had a row of cross stitching done while I’m standing here waiting for you to calculate that! But, I kept my mouth shut. I think my face made an involuntary expression because he said “I know . . that’s what you said.”

He would say “You can go sit down and I’ll call you when I need you.” I’d go into the living room, thread a needle and he’d say “I need you!” We’re all different. We all do things differently. I can accept that. I might have figured out the math in my head but ther’es no way I could have done that tile work, so, in the end, we’re a good team. I picked out the tile, he paid for it and did all the work! 🙂

But, he got it done and it looks amazing and there’s no telling how much money he saved by doing it himself.

It hasn’t been grouted yet because we have to decide what to do next. I would like to tile all the backsplashes but if we do, we have to put it above the laminate backsplash that’s already there, with the oak strip on top. There’s one corner where we cannot take that off without having a cabinet maker do a little work and we’ve already tried getting the cabinet maker to do some work and that doesn’t seem to be happening.

So, we can put the tile above the little short laminate backsplash in the whole kitchen but I think that’s always going to look like an afterthought type project. There is this little tile trim piece that we might could put on top of the wood trim.

I don’t know if that will work. Vince is going to go get one of those tomorrow so we can see how it would look.

Otherwise, we’ll just add enough tile to the sides of the backsplash behind the stove to square it up and be done.

At some point, we may change the countertop. I doubt we stay here 10 years and it’s probably not worth the investment for that amount of time since the countertop we have now is fine. I’m not a huge fan of granite. I can’t see changing laminate for laminate when ours is fine. I’ll check into quartz some day. I think a friend here had quartz in her last house before they moved here and she recently changed her laminate to granite. I’ll talk to her.

If we put the tile all the way across, Vince is not going to want to change the countertops ever, especially since I’d proably put subway tile back in again so . . we have two days to make a decision about all that.

I’m so happy to have the backsplash done. Maybe we should just square up those sides and be done for now.

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Comments

  1. I’ve had tile, granite and quartz kitchen counters, and I like quartz the best. Not that I would encourage you to spend more money. 🙂

  2. I put quartz in the Arizona main house kitchen–it happened right when we were leaving to head north so I haven’t used it yet but it does look great!

  3. My daughter just put in soapstone countertops. They are beautiful. She does have white cabinets though.

    • Soapstone is pretty but I don’t think it’s durable enough for my kitchen.

      • I just thought. My cousin chose Silestone for her kitchen because she caters out of her home. She said she chose it because it doesn’t stain like the stone countertops. I know there are other brands but that is what she liked.

        • There are way too many choices. All seem to have pros and cons . . it’s just to figure out what works best for each of us. I wish I had a small island for bread making and all the real kitchen work, then I could put stainless or something like that on top of it and not risk wearing one area of my countertop but . . that isn’t happening.

  4. We had quartz in the old house. I loved it! Soapstone and granite require annual maintenance. I currently have laminate and we will someday change it but to many other tasks in the meantime. This year was a new roof.

    • I’m definitely not saying don’t do annual maintenance but we were told so long as water beads up on the granite, the seal is good. We had it five or six years and when we put the house up for sale, we had the granite people come out and look at it and they said it was fine . . didn’t need anything. So, I wouldn’t let that deter me. I don’t know what it is I don’t really like about it. I guess I was always concerned about it cracking because I had two friends who did have theirs crack and it seems cold and hard . . which I guess is a good thing but to me, kitchens with granite never seem warm and inviting. That’s just me though. I know it’s very popular. It isn’t great for resale but I much prefer laminate just for the warmer, softer look.

  5. I much prefer the laminate also! It is warmer on my hands and arms when I sit at the island.

  6. Oh and I thought the uneven tile was a design choice. LIke the fun and funky look of it.

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