Kitchen Plans and DIY Tiling

Our kitchen has been about as finished as it is now for something close to a year.  This time last year we had rearranged the layout to give us better flow and accommodate our best ebay find ever: our enormous new range, and we had finished building the island and painting all of the cabinets.  We also figured out how to make our refrigerator its own built in style cubby to integrate it with the rest of the cabinetry.  You can see more of the before and after here.  Once we reached the point where the space was functional, we decided to hold off on a few of the final touches for the room 1) because there were other, more pressing projects to be prioritized, and 2) I just couldn't seem to make up my mind about what I wanted.  Sometimes I find that when I'm not sure what direction I'd like to take, it's better to live with the space for a while and see what happens.

Something we decided to wait on in the kitchen was tiling a backsplash.  Over a year and a half ago I was thinking about what tile to use and posted about it here.  We're just taking our sweet time getting around to this project, I guess! :)  For the past couple of weeks, though, I've been feeling like the time might be right pretty soon to pull out the buckets and rubber gloves again and make a huge mess-- and hopefully end up with a backsplash in the end.

For a while we toyed with the idea of a large stainless steel sheet behind the stove and tile around the rest of the wall, but eventually I scratched that and decided to go with all tile.  In order to narrow down which tile options we might like I picked up a couple of subway samples from Home Depot, taped them to some scraps of wood and propped them up on the counter to see them in their "natural habitat."  I chose two inexpensive options, one ceramic tile that's super budget friendly, and a marble that's the cheapest version of gray and white I've found.

Here are some of my inspiration photos-- and check out that blue range and hood!  

xo

Liza