I am going to warn you now that this post has a lot less to do with fabric and sewing and quilting than normal for me. But I can show you a sneak peak of the fabric I am working with to create a super fun picnic quilt:
Picnic Quilt Fabrics
Kitchen Backsplash
When my husband and I purchased our home, I was not really in love with the colors in the kitchen. It was a blank slate, but everything was white or some shade of off-white, which kind of drove me crazy. I cannot justify purchasing new appliances because they are still functional and we don’t have the budget for them. Nor can I just replace the countertops.
Kitchen: Before Move In
But I have a large collection of cobalt blue glassware that we have placed on top of the cabinets, blue and clear stained glass that we adhered in the kitchen window, and we hung some fun blue glass pendants above our table.
Kitchen Table Area Updated
Kitchen: Moving In
So I started daydreaming of a tile backsplash for the kitchen to help add some color. But putting up tile feels like a forever commitment. Then I happily found this very informative blog tutorial on painting a tile backsplash. Score! We picked out a color theme and ordered the 1/4″ masking tape a few months ago and this weekend we took the plunge and got started.
Painting Tile Backsplash – Taping Out “Grout” Grid
It took us about 3 hours to lay out the tape gridwork.
Painting Tile Backsplash – 2 of 4 Colors Applied
With 2 of us painting, it took about an hour per color for the first two paint colors. By then (5 hours into the project) our backs and arms and shoulders were burning and hurting, so we finished up for the weekend.
Painting Tile Backsplash – All 4 Colors Applied
On Monday, I spent 4 hours finishing up the last 2 paint colors on my own, and I love how it looks with the tape pulled! But I’ll let you in on our little problem: we have textured walls. So the paint bled through the tap lines a bit, making the final effect a bit too messy.
Fuzzy Edges Due to Textured Walls
After some brainstorming, we developed a plan to clean up these fuzzy lines. While it is going to take even more time to finish up, by outlining each “tile” with silver sharpie, I think we are going to be happy with the final result!
Solution: Silver Sharpie!
Painted Tile Backsplash
I am super excited by the way it transformed our kitchen! 🙂 The best part is that this is a super contemporary look for right now, and if it becomes too dated and styles and preferences change, I can just paint over it! Plus, this looks like a really great modern quilt pattern, too.
Updated Kitchen
Love your blue “tiles”! My kitchen has really ugly tiles that I would love to paint over. Even better would be to rip them out but i don’t know how much work/prep that would be to the walls. Our whole kitchen is pretty bad (it’s a bit of a hack job by the previous owner) and the cabinets were dark green D: we’ve painted them white and changed the handles so they look worlds better now but one day we want to re-do the whole thing.
If you don’t like the bench tops, you can actually get laminate paint (I’m guessing your benches are laminate by the way they look) to change it. I’ve seen some sets that come with little coloured chip things to make it look like a kind of stone or marble effect as well. You can also use cement on them and seal it (Young House Love did this recently).
Fun! Even though I’m not a fan of blue. Your sneak peak looks like there is some 4th of July picking coming up 🙂
Love the backsplash! Very fun and creative project!!
I can’t believe you painted that!!! What a great idea! Our kitchen backsplash is just unfinished wall, and we’ve been waiting until we can afford to tile it right, but painting something like this very well might be a good stand in! The silver sharpie idea is also brilliant, and one that I would have never thought (“Let’s just draw on the wall with permanent marker”). Way to think outside the box. I think it looks beautiful!