Really done. No, seriously, tile and all
When I posted last Monday, I really expected that we would not have tile for a few weeks and that it would be a while before I had pictures of the truly completed kitchen to post. Then we met with Matt from Payneless Flooring, who had an opening this past Thursday. He and his crew worked all day Thursday and Friday, and then half the day Saturday, to install our complex tile design. Now the kitchen is really finished and looking exactly as we envisioned it so many months ago.
Fact is, Anne and I had no idea how difficult our tile would be to install. It’s handmade tile, all irregular, and it’s thick clay mixed with little stone mosaic tiles which happen to be much thinner than the clay. There’s the big design above the stove, with all its intricacies, and the field tile/stone layout, which required clipping corners from most of the basic 4×4 field tiles. I was home on Thursday and got a sense of how much effort they had to put in to make the design look right.
After so many weeks without a kitchen, worrying about how every detail would turn out, it was great that this final bit went so well. The guys from Payneless did an incredible job, and Matt refused to raise the price despite the job running about a day longer than planned.
Here’s how it all turned out:
Main wall with design above stove
Framed tile design above stove
Desk area
Sink corner
Whole main wall
And that’s it! That’s how we wanted the kitchen to look. We’re so happy with the result - tile, cabinetry, counter tops, appliances - everything ended up exactly as we wanted it. Although… Anne’s not too happy with the paint color on the walls… that might get changed.
We did tile the dry bar too, though because the exact design for the dry bar changed so late in the process, we didn’t have enough tile to cover the whole back of the cabinet. So it’s a bit incomplete while we wait for the last bit of tile to arrive:
Partially-complete dry bar tile
More of these stone tiles should arrive next week, at which point they’ll be cemented to the wall and grouted. And then we’ll really be done…