Crowdsourcing the Tile Decisions

We've been hemming and hawing over the tile decisions.  We've purchased four boxes of white subway tile and some mastic, along with a tile cutter and a notched trowel, and ...

They are still sitting in the corner of our kitchen. 

To be fair, we've had a couple of insanely busy weekends, with nary a moment to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee, much less start tiling backsplashes.  The last thing either of us wants to do when we get home from work on, say, a Tuesday, is start a DIY home improvement project that neither of us has any idea about.  Yes, I'm sure it's pretty easy once you get going, but it's the "getting going" part that has us a little wary.  Drew has further declared that he wants to tile with "someone who can actually help" instead of his increasingly off-balance wife.  I told him I could still climb on counters and he told me I was crazy.  Harumpf.  So if you are "someone who can actually help" in the Greater Boston area, I will ply you with all the beer and pizza you can handle (or with whatever food/beverage combo your heart desires) to come help Drew tile our kitchen.  Also everlasting gratitude.  Bonus points if you have ever tiled a wall before.  

Anyway. 

The final reason we haven't started tiling yet is that we're not entirely sure what sort of aesthetic we're going for, particularly on the large wall behind the sink.  To refresh your memory, the space will be tiled to some degree and there will be open shelving along the length of the wall.  We're thinking nicely stained/polyurethaned wood with wrought iron brackets for the open shelving but haven't decided whether we want two shelves or three.  

This photo is pre-countertops and sink, but you get the idea.  There is also some funny business to deal with on the left:

Notice the trim piece that sticks out and that weird box.  Also how the ceiling is super crooked where it meets the wall.  (Some of that is uneven paint, but not all of it.)

Do we tile all the way to the ceiling and shave tiles as necessary to get a good fit?  Do we stop several inches short?  If so, do we finish with offset tiles or do we use border pieces?  How do we butt the tiles up against the door frame?  Border or not?  If the tile extends above the door frame, how do we deal with that?  The only tile-placement decision I've made for certain is that the tiles in the corner by the sink will just smash up against that wall - half tile, whole tile, partial tile, whatever - they'll just be right in the corner with no border or anything.  

And then there are the grout decisions.  White grout?  Dark grout?  Medium grout?  We have black grout on hand from when we regrouted the bathroom but I'm not opposed to white or gray either.  

So, in the spirit of the modern age, I've decided to ask YOU (whoever you are) what you think we should do.  I've assembled the photos below courtesy of Apartment Therapy's helpful and timely article, "10 Inspiring Uses of Subway Tile in the Kitchen."  They really capture the range of options.

Here's your assignment:  After you've put your creative minds to work, please help us make some decisions!  Leave your comments ON THE BLOG (not on Facebook, s'il vous plait) and we will sort through all the pearls of wisdom and make some choices.  To recap, we are wondering: 

1. What color grout to use

2. How high the tiles should go behind the open shelving

3. How to deal with the edging near the door and above the door

4. Whether to cap off the highest row of tile with a border or leave it plain

White grout, tile ends at the ceiling, no border on the top or edge

This is NOT subway tile, but whatever.  Darker grout and what looks like a quarter round border at the top.
Also notice their left edge is totally unfinished.

Darker grout, no top border, tile ends several inches below the ceiling.
Also, these brackets have the aesthetic we're after for the open shelving.

Darker grout, ends with a border at the top, butts right up against the window frame with no border.

Ends below open shelving, no border at the top, slightly darker grout,
wraps around to the adjacent wall (where I don't see a border, but I could be wrong).

I'm also not sure if I would call this subway tile, but it's still cool.
Lighter grout (though maybe not white?) and no borders anywhere.  

No borders, darker grout, ends above one shelf and below the other.
Also, these people have a real thing for eggs and egg cups.  And carbs.

White grout, tile everywhere, no borders.

I can't really tell whether the tile ends at the beam with a border or whether the beam goes over the tile, but these people also have a trim piece that sticks out. 

Border at the top, darker grout, no borders on the sides.
Also, this is the tone of wood shelving we're thinking about. 

So there you have it.  Please help us!

An Ode to Our Kitchen Sink

Okay, so it's not an ode.  Senior English was a long time ago and I'm a terrible poet.  But, if I were a better poet, I would totally write lots of flowery poetry about our new kitchen sink.  Instead, I will write a list.  I'm very good at lists - just ask Drew.

Four Things I Love About Our New Sink: 

1.  It's 9-10 inches deep.  Our previous sink was 7-8 inches deep and I was forever getting water all over the place trying to wash the cutting board or the pasta pot.

2.  It is flat on the bottom.  The previous sink was sloped from the sides to the drains, so anything you tried to place in sink slid into the drain.  And sometimes shattered into the garbage disposal.

3.  We bought one of those suction cup sponge holder thingies to hold the sponge so it's not making puddles on the counter when Drew forgets to squeeze it out.  That's not really the "sink," exactly, but it's in the sink, so it counts.

4.  It's mounted under the counter and is not dropped in on top of the countertop material, making it easy to wipe crumbs straight into the sink.  Drew is the crumb-making master of the universe, so this is an important feature for my sanity and/or our marital bliss.

Although the sink is quite a star, there's another act in town that might steal the spotlight:

The faucet!  It's by Moen (you'll have to imagine the umlaut) and it's glorious.

Things I love about the faucet: 

1. It's tall, making it a snap to wash cutting boards and pasta pots (and hopefully our daughter-in-progress) without flooding the counter.

2.  It has a rockin' "spray" function (pictured above).

3.  If you pull on the head of the faucet, a really long hose comes out and you can spray everything.  There is no pressure loss when you are using the hose and it smoothly retracts back into the neck of the faucet when you're done.

4.  It's made of some kind of fingerprint-free material.  There are no water spots or fingerprints on it after a week of use - we'll see if it lasts, but so far I'm super impressed.

5.  It came with a soap pump that we put dish soap into.  One less bottle cluttering the counter!  (Sidenote: Our old sink had this function too, but the nozzle was so grimy, we never bothered to use it.  However, while we were setting up the new soap pump, Drew had an epiphany.  The mysterious blue bottle is the dish soap from the old sink!  The demolition guys took it out before they dismantled the sink and saved for us (reason unknown).  Mystery solved.)

There was nothing I liked about our previous faucet.  The faucet itself was this squat little thing that didn't swivel very well, making it difficult to wash tall things.  The sprayer was not attached to the faucet and was a cheap plastic model that had a really wimpy spray and a really short hose.  You couldn't even spray down the sides of the sink properly.  Somehow though, we were always battling countertop flooding.  Never did figure that one out.  Finally, there were fingerprints and water spots everywhere, all the time, no matter how hard I tried to fight it.

The garbage disposal and the dishwasher also work now, which is great.  Even though I would wash all the dishes in the world in our fancy new sink, I'm a huge fan of our dishwasher too.  And that garbage disposal.  I just don't know what I'd do without a garbage disposal.

So there you have it.  Our remaining projects in the kitchen are as follows: 
- Tile backsplash near stove
- Tile wall above sink
- Grout everything
- Install open shelving
- Replace horrible overhead light
- Touch up trim, including spots that have been recently replaced.

We're getting there!  Until we do the rest of the stuff on the list though, we're ecstatic to be able to cook and clean in our kitchen like normal people.  We'll be having people over for dinner again in no time!

It's like Christmas!

The countertop installation crew came yesterday and stayed for a mere 45 minutes, but not before installing three lovely slabs of Azul Platino granite in our kitchen.

They placed the first slab to the right of the sink.  The countertop extends to the edge of the wall, which isn't quite as far from the cabinet as it looks - that blue tape is stuck to the cabinet, not the wall.  We also got a slab for the far side of the sink - don't worry.

The largest slab is in the sink area.  In our old apartment, we had granite countertops (which we loved) but there was a pesky seam that got crud caught in it ALL. THE. TIME. It was super gross and there was no amount of scrubbing that would make it truly clean.  No more of that, folks.  We're totally seamless now.

Sorry for the blurriness.  Again with the phone camera...  It's also worth noting that the granite isn't quite as dark as it appears in these photos.  It's pretty uniform, pattern-wise, and has little sparkly bits in it.  It makes a satisfying sound when you put a glass or a pot or something on it and it's my new favorite thing.

The crew also glued the sink to the underside of the countertop.  We went with an undermount sink so that we could sweep the crumbs from the work surface directly into the sink without needing to go up and over the edge of a drop in sink.  We had to do this in the previous iteration of the kitchen, which led to yet more crud that was virtually unscrubbable.  (Favor: Please say "unscrubbable." So fun.)

The installation process was super fast.  The guys hauled in the slabs, heave-ho'd them up onto the cabinets, grunted and groaned and pushed them all into place (perfect fit, btw, even in the tricky little area near the sink), put some caulk in the crack between the counter and the wall, and presumably did something from the underside as well (I missed that part).  They glued the sink in and were off on their merry way.

One funny thing happened.  I was standing in the living room and saw one of the crew members sort of lurking in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen.  I looked up and he asked "can I have some water," and held up a glass.  I said, "Of course! Right in the bathroom" (Isn't that where you keep YOUR drinking water??) before realizing that the thing he was holding up looked suspiciously like one of our stemless wine glasses.  They were sitting on the shelf in the pantry, ripe for the taking, and it made me chuckle that the countertop guy was jonesing for some water in a crystal wineglass.  Also I was hoping that he wouldn't break it.

But then I realized he was holding up a particularly well-shaped water bottle whose top half had been cut off.  Then I laughed out loud and everyone looked at me like I was a lunatic.  Par for the course.

And then Drew cooked dinner on our countertops!  And it was delicious.  And then I washed the dishes in the bathroom FOR THE LAST TIME!  The plumber comes today to hook up the sink, the garbage disposal, and the dishwasher.  Hallelujah, I say.

The strange bottle of blue liquid, which was not in this spot yesterday, has made yet another appearance.  This time it was considerate enough to put down a paper towel.  We'll see whether the plumber takes it away or whether it's our "gift with purchase."  Only time will tell...

That Awkward In-Between Stage

So we've been patiently waiting for our countertops to be made.  We've been cooking on our stove, using our kitchen table as counter space, and washing all of our dishes in the (very small) bathroom sink.  This is the type of delay we expected, but that didn't make it any more fun.  I'm just glad we renovated the bathroom before we did the kitchen - it would have been awful to wash dishes in the previous bathroom sink, looking at those horrid yellow and purple sponge painted walls, and standing on that moldy linoleum.  But I digress.

Before the countertops go in we had to deal with some of the crew's more artistic work.  You'll remember that some two-year-old disguised as an adult wiped their fingers on the wall:

and there was a lot of very rough plaster all over our fancy teal paint:

Drew sanded down all the rough surfaces, spackled a few holes, and primed the plaster:

Then he repainted all the areas that won't be covered in tile.  We're not sure how high we're going to take the tile behind the sink, so we brought the paint down fairly far from the ceiling.  

Ta da! (ish)

Other things we've done during the delay include putting all our stuff in the kitchen cabinets, buying drawer liner at Ikea so we can keep the drawers/shelves in mint condition, and putting the dining room back together.

Ahhh... No more boxes...

Even though some people poo-poohed our decision to do open shelving above the sink instead of closed cabinets, I'm happy to report that we have PLENTY of cabinet space to spare, even with all our stuff back in the cabinets.  That pantry is second to none when it comes to storing a ton of stuff - it's just too bad we couldn't have a pantry *and* a walk-in closet.  Oh well.

Side note: Sorry the quality of these photos is sort of blah.  Our real camera (which isn't too great itself, truth be told) stopped working this week and so these are iPhone specials.

The countertop fellas should be here pretty soon.  I am focusing all my energy on hoping that the granite is perfectly cut, that the sink fits in nicely, and that they will go away lickety split so I can make dinner on my fancy new countertops.  The plumber is set to hook up the sink, garbage disposal, and dishwasher tomorrow, so (FINGERS CROSSED, EVERYONE) our kitchen will be 100% functional as of tomorrow evening!