Not Your (Trendy) Grandmother’s Herringbone Backsplash: Part 1 (Prep)

Happy Monday! I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving! Sam and I were in North Carolina visiting his mom and stepdad who relocated there this summer, and Naomi and Brad celebrated with family in Massachusetts. It was nice to see a new part of the country, enjoy the warmer weather, and see Sam’s mom, stepdad, brother, and sister (of course I see his sister all the time because we still work together!).

In any case, we got back late Saturday night, and then Sunday diligently got some work done in the kitchen. I know I have a ton to catch you up on, so today I thought I would start the how-to of the backsplash project since you saw it in my post about painting the cabinets last week but I didn’t dive into the details. Today I’ll share about the options I considered and the prep steps, and then Wednesday I’ll give the full tiling blow-by-blow.

I’ve basically spent the entire 11 months that we’ve been working on the kitchen (so far) trying to figure out what to do for the backsplash. I was torn between a few approaches: simple subway tile (easy, low cast, and fairly neutral), something a little more exciting like marble (feels a little more special, but still relatively neutral), or something bold and exciting like patterned tiles.

With relatively neutral walls, cabinets, and counters, I was drawn to the idea of something colorful and unique on the backsplash. I mean, look at these:

To be honest, if cost hadn’t been a factor I might have gone this direction. But these tiles were all like $30/square foot + (even the Mirth Studio tiles above — which are actually wood — very cool! — are $28 each for a 12″x12″ tile…), which is just more than I felt able to spend at this stage of the project (especially after the unexpected floor and dishwasher expenses). I also did worry that it would be a little too loud/busy, and since this isn’t our forever home I do want it to be something that doesn’t totally scare off future buyers. Instead, I think adding color through accessories and other less significant structural elements is the way to go.

Still, I wasn’t ready to give up on the idea of something a little special, so marble also caught my attention. Just look at this beautiful backsplash (and counter) from Sarah Sherman Samuel:

But marble would also have been costly, higher maintenance than I’d like in my kitchen, and I worried that it felt a little upscale for the true vibe of our house…there’s only so fancy you can be with 7′ ceilings.

So that brought me back to plain old subway tile. Everyone has it. But everyone has it for a reason: it’s affordable and neutral, so it makes a great choice if your backsplash is not going to be the star of the show/budget. Still, I wanted my kitchen to feel just a little special, even if subtley — so I decided to do a less popular pattern, the “45-degree herringbone.” You can see it pictured last in this lineup of different tile patterns:

I really don’t like 90-degree herringbone, popular as it is. But the 45-degree herringbone really appealed to me because it feels much more modern and “architectural” — I know that’s a strange way to describe it, but for some reason it makes me think of Frank Lloyd Wright, who I absolutely love. You can see it especially well when it’s done with dark grout, like this bathroom also by Sarah Sherman Samuels:

But I knew that for my kitchen, white grout was the way to go to keep the pattern more subtle. (Bonus: white grout also minimizes the visibility of slight variations in tile spacing….)

In terms of tile, I hunted around and finally found this tile from Lowes:

They are sold by the piece for $.22 each, and at 3″x6″ each that comes to $1.76/square foot. What a steal! Plus they are “self spacing” which means I didn’t need to buy spacers too. They are much whiter than some of the “white” subway tiles I came across in my search, and they look good against our white counters (I took a counter remnant to the store with me to compare, but you could also bring home a tile sample if you can’t bring your counter to the store — well worth the time before you buy everything and start tiling).

I did have one awkward encounter in the store when I cut myself on some sharp tile:

But fortunately I carry bandaids in my purse at all times.

Here’s the full list of supplies I needed:

• 300 subway tiles (I ended up with 68 left over, which I was able to return after settting aside 4 in case I need to replace any down the road) — $52 (I knew I needed somewhere between 30 – 35 square feet…at one point I measured it out perfectly and wrote it down in my kitchen planning excel file, and then the changes got erased and rather than re-measure I just decided to err on the top end and plan for some waste because of cuts)
• Aluminum tile trim (to use instead of trim pieces) — $18
• Thinset mortar — $13
• Unsanded grout, white — $9
• Grout float — $5
• Grout sponge — $2
• Trowel — already had from previous tiling project
• Bucket — already had
• Joint compound to repair wall — already had
• Drywall knife to repair wall — $9
• Tile saw — I found a very well-reviewed one from Lowes, but ordered it from Amazon for $85 (affiliate link – read our policies)

Total cost: $194

Before I could start tiling, I needed to do some prep work on the space. I’d removed the previous backsplash in October, but that left some minor damage in the drywall plus a fair amount of leftover thinset.

You can’t tile over such an uneven surface, so my first step was to use my DeWalt multi-tool to remove the thinset as much as I could:

The wall was still pretty beat up and uneven, though, so I used joint compound and a drywall knife to skim coat the entire thing:

Once it had dried, I sanded it down and was left with a fairly smooth work surface at last. I’m not going to give a tutorial on this particular step because I don’t think I’m an example of good skim coating technique. In fact, I know I’m not. But here’s a better tutorial from Toolbox Divas if you need one!

I also needed to move the wiring for the range hood. It was installed very off-center for the outlet that the microwave had been plugged into:

It had been inside the cabinet that was there so it didn’t matter that it was off to the side, but I knew that it needed to be centered so that it would be hidden behind the new range hood I planned to install. Moving it was a highly technical process. First I switched off the electricity to that circuit, then I drilled a new hole in the middle of the wall, then I used a difficult and unwieldy series of coat hangers to move the wires to the new hole. I taped one coat hanger to the end of the wires to push them back into the wall (coat hanger taped on so I wouldn’t risk losing the wires in the wall), then used another coat hanger to reach through the new hole and hook on to the wires and pull them through. I did all this while wearing my headlamp to see into the hole and standing on the top of the counters/stove, hence the lack of photos…. There was a lot of cursing and sweating, but it actually worked!

After that I finished patching the holes in the wall where the cabinet and old wiring had been, and then I was finally ready to start tiling!

That’s it for today, but I’ll be back on Wednesday with Part #2 about how I actually tiled the backsplash.