Backsplash Revamp

You've heard me mention a few times before that we have a great desire to renovate our kitchen.  But, that's at least two years down the line, as there are other things that we would like to get done first.  In the meantime, however, we want to do something that makes it look a little better and to personalize it a bit.  The thing that I hate the most about our kitchen is the backsplash.  It's this really ugly peach colored ceramic tile that has a few printed tiles laid into the design.  Some of them have wine bottles and grapes on them, and that is definitely not our style.

I started researching cheap and easy alternatives to change this out, as we don't want something that will be too involved or expensive, as it will likely be changed again in a few years when we completely renovate the kitchen.  I looked at a few different materials.

The first one that I found was AirStone.  AirStone is a product that is made from recycled materials, and is meant to look like actual stones.  They come in a variety of sizes, and adhere to the surface that you want to place them on via an adhesive mortar.  These look awesome, but for the amount that we would need, it would be just over $100, and while that is still really inexpensive, it was more than we wanted to spend.

The second material that I looked at was Tin Ceiling Tiles, which are also adhesive.  These come in great textures, colors, and patterns, but the price for a single tile was way more expensive than we wanted.  Plus, I wasn't so sure about how good a shiny metal backsplash would look against a matte finish Corian countertop.

The last material I found was vinyl floor tile.  With the vinyl floor tile, you have the option of going with a solid color, or choosing one with dimension and different textures.  Another benefit of the vinyl was that it was cheap, it was adhesive, like the other materials, and it didn't require additional caulking.

With this in mind, we went over to Lowes this weekend and picked out a few different colors and patterns and bought sample tiles to bring home and test against the cabinets and countertops.  The samples are actually real tiles, which you can purchase from as little as $.88 or as much as $2.25.  We ended up coming home with 7 different tiles, and chose which one we were going to go with less than two minutes after leaning them up over the existing backsplash.

The one that we ended up choosing was the most expensive one, of course. Everything that I like always ends up costing a million dollars, but in this case, we're still going to end up right where we wanted to be budget wise.  Even though these tiles are $2.25 each, they are 18"x18", instead of 12"x12", Which means that we won't need to buy as many cases and there will be much less cutting involved since the height of our backsplash is 18".

Tile against the backsplash and under the cabinets

Tile on the counter and in better lighting

Tile closeup

So, you can see that the tile has a lot of gray, so it will go with the white cabinets and the stainless steel appliances, but it also has some tans and browns in it, so it will go with the countertops, too. We have plans to paint this room this summer, so the gray that we have chosen for that will match as well.

What do you think? Do you think this small change will make a drastic difference in our kitchen? I am so looking forward to doing this, and don't worry, I'll make you all a DIY!!