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I’ve waited a long time for this

July 23, 2022

Sarah Randall

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We're so glad you're here! We've been transforming spaces together for the past five years and slowly renovating our own 1950's home. Join us as we create a home we love!

Hi, we're Jake and Sarah

I’ve had this vision in my head for a while now…a tile wall (not just a backsplash) in the kitchen, with vertically stacked 2×6 zellige in some sort of earthy beige color. Here we are, finally installing it! We decided to do this ourselves to save money. I estimate this would have cost between three and four thousand to have installed for us. We’ve never done such an extensive tiling project, and the first hour was pretty chaotic, but we are finding a rhythm and slowly chipping away at it.

We bought the most economical tile saw at Lowe’s (under $65), and it’s served us well. I thought we would need to rent a huge tile saw for our upcoming beveled cuts, but I just found out the blade can be tilted for beveled cuts! Small but mighty, this saw!

We plan to bevel the border cuts, just like our shower here.

Here is how it’s looking so far! The tile is the 2×6 Zellige in the color glazed clay from Riad Tile. I opened all the boxes and blended the tiles in my garage (pulled from various boxes and mixed them up) before installation to avoid patches of color on the wall. Riad has a tile calculator on their site so you can type in your measurements and find out how many boxes you’ll need. Be sure to include at least a 15% “overage” for tile cuts. We are working in partnership with Riad tile on this project, so the tile was gifted to us. We needed 115 square feet, which would cost $2,140. Keep in mind, we are covering our entire wall. A typical backsplash would be much smaller and less expensive than this!

We’ve also used mortar, this mixer for our drill, this trowel, and these 1/4 inch spacers. We set up this laser level on a tripod to help guide our work ($220). It’s self-leveling and requires AA batteries (the one that uses the rechargeable tool battery was over $600, so we went with the less expensive option).

Here is what our garage currently looks like, from all the “blending!”

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