Finally, an update on the kitchen!

If you are new here (and if you are, why hello there you sexy thang! Thank you for joining me!), you can read about my design influences here, discovering the hidden ceiling here, tearing it down here, putting up the plasterboard and pendants here and plastering here.)

Two weekends ago on a sunny Saturday morning, we trawled through Homebase, Wickes and B&Q,, scooping up the Bank Holiday specials in order to buy all the items we needed to start tiling.  We also picked up a cooker hood (extractor) and a stainless steel splashback.

That evening we put up the cooker hood.

For some unknown reason, I don’t have any pics prior to putting up the cooker hood.  As you can see, we had put some blue painters tape up just to get an idea of the size and location of the open shelving that will be going there.

Even just the addition of the cooker hood made a difference to the feel of the room.  It was actually starting to feel like a KITCHEN rather than a room with a cooker and a sink.  Honestly.  But there was more to come.

You’ll see that there were a number of silver plate plug sockets.  They were in pretty bad shape, scratched up and covered in old paint.  To add insult to injury, they weren’t even installed straight on the wall OR aligned to one another in terms of their height.  Well, why highlight these imperfections by using a darker coloured plate?  So we took the decision to remove them and use white plug socket plates to blend better with a white tiled wall.

On the Sunday afternoon, we tiled the first row at the bottom and let that set overnight.  As the tiles are adhered to the wall with no direct support from the countertop (as this will eventually be replaced), this ensures the weight of tiles above them don’t move the bottom row and makes for a nice straight and strong base for the rest of the tiles. 

On the Bank Holiday Monday, we completed the rest of the tiles and put up the stainless steel splashback.

The picture below shows the tiles adhered to the walls and the white plug sockets in place… Now the coolest thing about this part of our remodel is that W cut the odd shaped and sized tiles but I did pretty much all the actual sticking-them-to-the-wall!!  I know, I know, you’re shocked, right?  This girl can DIY like the best of ’em, mmhmm.

I used tile spacers (those little ‘x’ shapes in the image above and removed one of the prongs to create a ‘t’ shape) and used a small spirit level throughout to ensure everything was straight.

Once the tiles were in place, the stainless steel back plate was glued in place with ‘No Nails’.

Last weekend, I applied the dark grey grout and finally, this weekend, applied the white grout (around the plug sockets and in the corners) and W wired up the extractor hood.

Once the grout went on and the tiles were cleaned (sorry I don’t have pics of the messy stuff, as I was doing most the work for once, I didn’t stop to take lots of photos), you can really see how lovely the tiles look.  We went with a dark grey grout for both practical and aesthetic reasons.  I love that the detail of the brick tiles really stands out now.

Note how the socket plates now blend in  instead of stick out like sore (unevenly spaced) thumbs!

So it’s taken us 3 weeks to get the tiling done.  And to be fair, it’s not even 100% finished as there is still a little bit of touching up to do but it is nearly there.

The reason this is taking so long?  Well, we both work full time in pretty demanding environments – by the time we get home, we’re shattered so any DIY takes place at the weekend.  But with warmer weather comes more invites from friends and family (not complaining of course!) so DIY has to be fit in amongst any social engagements! Priorities, people, priorities!

I’m pretty proud of my tiling work and we actually worked quite well as a team on this project.  I will say that DIY can be a bit stressy at times and sometimes we’ll end up ‘bickering’ about little things when we do work!  Hey, we’re a normal couple and we are very much in love but he’s quite strong willed and I like to be a wee bit bossy so sometimes we clash *wink*  Well, on this job, I have to say, there was absolutely nothing but a happy vibe going!  Woohoo!

The tiles only go part way up the wall because above this will be our open shelving units.

So, how ’bout a little before and after (well, ‘in progress’)?

Before we started doing any real work…

I always thought the little skinny row of tiles  looked rather silly and incomplete.

And what it looks like now…

Before…

And now…

The wiring from the extractor hood you see will be hidden once the shelves go up.

As you can see, there are still LOADS of things to do.  In terms of priorities, we’ll probably paint next and now that we know the size and location of the open shelving units, they will be built soon.  The cornising will be probably follow the shelving.  So we’re working our way down apparently!

It’s slow going, peeps, but we’re getting there.  Slowly but surely, we’re getting there…

Here’s what we’ve spent so far…


Plasterboard £30
Screws £10
Lining tape £5
Plaster £20 for 3 bags (only used 2 bags so can be used for future projects)
Pendant lights £160 (£55 x 3)
Tiles £55 (on sale – original price £83)
Tile cutter £35 (on sale – original price £50 and will be used for the flooring too)
grout £12
spacers £4 (for 1000 which again will be used for the flooring)
adhesive £23 (3 tubs)
5 new plug socket covers £13 (value pack)
Cooker hood £59 (on sale – original price approximately £100)
Stainless steel backsplash £60 (on sale but can’t remember original price)


Total spent so far: £486

Want to know what’s in store for the entire remodel? Go see the home tour page for everything we’ve got planned.


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