Home Project: Bathroom Tile Backsplash

In my last bathroom post I noted that we had one more big project left to do in there. Well, here it is: a tile backsplash!

The bathroom didn’t need much but it needed something to make it a little more sophisticated (as sophisticated as a bathroom can get, I guess). We’ve seen many a backsplash go up on HGTV and knew we could totally do it ourselves.

So we measured our space and then went to Home Depot and got all the supplies: 3 tile panels, grout (be sure to use the pre-mixed/ready to use kind), pointing trowel, notched trowel, and grouting sponge.

We put a drop cloth over the sink and gave our grout a quick stir.

On to the application! John used the pointing and notched trowel for this job. The idea is to apply an even but thin-ish layer of grout to the wall.

When the grout was all applied evenly, we carefully adhered our tile panels. Two of the panels we affixed and the third we had to cut up to even the top and edges of the backsplash.

We then lightly pressed the tiles into the grout to make sure everything was even and level. Some of the grout came through which is fine.

The next step was to add another even layer of grout to the surface of the tiles to make sure every crack was filled with grout.

John applied patches of grout with the pointing trowel while I finished by wiping the layer down evenly with a paper towel (err, like 50 paper towels).

The final step was to rinse away all the excess grout with a grouting sponge. That was my job. I would wipe a few times then rinse my sponge then wring out the sponge. This took about 5 fresh buckets of water to complete. It was pretty time intensive and I’m too OCD to not have done it perfectly.

But finally, all the excess grout was gone and the lovely tiles shone through. I did some edging touch ups with a Qtip.

Pretty, right? The backsplash was a relatively inexpensive and quick small DIY home improvement project that has really brightened up our bathroom. I’m so glad we did it.