The White Kitchen

Home Depot was recently clearing out their little Ryobi wet saws for $99 and I couldn’t resist. I think we were there to pick out floors or something for the house in Orleans. We left the store 100 dollars poorer but with a shiny new toy.

I was recently hired to install a backsplash in a house in Kanata that will be going on the market this coming Spring. The homeowner wanted standard 4″ white tiles interspersed with those new translucent coloured glass tiles as accents. I have never used those glass tiles before and was looking forward to designing with them.

The real estate agent, however, had other ideas and wanted to see a simpler kitchen without accents. After all, this exercise was to help sell the house. So the glass tiles go back to the store.

What I had anticipated being a two-weekend job turned into an 8 hour job with Suzan’s help. The owner was out of town for a few days and we quickly turned the kitchen into a war zone. We removed the appliances and set up the saw in the middle of the floor.

Note to self: set up the saw on a portable work table next time – my legs are still sore from a thousand squats.

I cut the tiles and Suzan installed them. It took us 6 hours to install. The adhesive came pre-mixed and was a treat to work with – it took us all of 6 hours to install! The next day we went back and grouted (+2 hrs). The grout was non-sanded which didn’t destroy Suzan’s thin rubber gloves but she ended up washing her hands so much during the installation that her hands destroyed themselves 😦

As a finishing touch, we replaced all the old beige receptacles with shiny new white ones. I still have to make one more trip out to Kanata to seal the grout with a spray-on sealant.

So that was the dry run for the new house in Orleans. The saw worked good but not as good as its larger cousins. We plan on re-tiling two bathrooms in the new house and now I won’t have to rent a wet saw for days on end. But we might* be doing a stone backsplash in the kitchen which the Ryobi probably can’t handle. Oh well, I’ll get to use a big boy wet saw after all.

*The kitchen design has not been finalized nor approved.