Meet Mr. Slate.
Varied in thickness, bumpy in surface texture.
It all started with the salesman selling us seven boxes of moderately priced backsplash tile and simple directions to thin coat, tile, and grout. He felt a weekend was an adequate amount of time to complete such a project.
BEEEEP. WRONG.
Fast forward about six months and the directions were more like lose feeling in your hands from the repetitive vibrations of a wet saw shaking you while cutting hundreds of tiles to fit so snugly around outlets, vent hoods, and into corners. My favorite part, though, is that part that you always saw Norm and Bob Vila on This Old House warning viewers about: no house is plum.
Meaning, your shit aint straight, yo.
So in about half of the kitchen, the cabinets were about 1/16th of an inch lower than in the rest. Meaning, each of those tiles had to be shaved juuuuust ever so slightly to fit in. For those not familiar with stone cutting-- doing such a thin cut is a giant pain in the butt.
Another of Nawm and Bob's warnings to heed: turn off the power before you mess with electrical things. Even if you just think you're going to squeak a spacer behind an outlet to make the fancy new slate faceplate flush with the fancy new slate subway tile.
Oops. Also, FYI, a true electrical shock is nothing like dragging your feet across the carpet and catching a little zap when you flip on the lightswitch. Oh no, a true electrical shock hurts like a (!)!%^&_!* and involves seeing spots and needing to lie down.
We love the backsplash-- seriously, it's fab-- but never again. We'll take the learned lesson with us and leave the tiling to the pros.
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