It is the end of an era. Yes, it’s done! Beautiful, glorious penny tile is done! This weekend I finished grouting and sealing the penny tile, and this is what it looks like now.
The grouting took all afternoon on Saturday to complete. I started by taping plastic over the counters to protect them from any grout spillage.
The grout came in a powder form, and was mixed with liquid “add-mixture” from The Tile Shop to form a toothpaste consistency.
Grouting was fun, but definitely messy! I started out using the proper tool, the grout float…
but eventually resorted to using my hands.
Although this made it more fun, kind of like playing with sand, I HIGHLY recommend using gloves if you choose this method. I failed to realize at the time that I was slowly sanding away my fingertips, ouch! Also grout it extremely drying to your skin. Lesson learned.
After applying the grout I went back with a sponge several times to wipe away the excess grout.
I came back multiple times with a damp sponge and then a dry rag over the tile. The dry rag helped to buff the surface of the tile and make the penny tiles shine!
The grout dried overnight and this morning I started the process of sealing the grout. I gathered my supplies: the sealer, a sponge, gloves, rags, and a sponge brush for the small spaces.
Sealing is very easy; you simply wipe on the sealer with a sponge, and wipe off the excess off of the tile surface with a dry rag.
I did one coat of sealer over all of the grout, and then did a second coat over the bottom 3-4 inches since that would likely be where any splashes or spills would end up. The whole process took only about an hour. I still need to apply caulk along the edges and add trim pieces where the tile meets the wall, but I’m waiting to borrow one of those nice caulking tools from someone (Mom, don’t you have one?).
Since this process went so quickly today I took it upon myself to move onto the next kitchen project, much to my husband’s dismay. I figured, why not keep adding to the mess since our house is already a disaster. So now our kitchen looks like this.
It’s a little odd having half of our kitchen completely white (well not white…”Willow Springs” by Olympic) and the other half in color. But, it is only temporary. Here’s a little hint of what’s to come.
Inspiration from Pinterest:
I might be insane, but I’m stocked up on Frog painters tape ready for step two this week.
One might ask, “So how do you eat when your kitchen is a disaster area?” Today I pulled out a frozen pizza from our freezer. It’s actually a very delicious non-dairy, veggie pizza from Trader Joe’s. It was my lunch and dinner today, supplemented with a juicy orange.
It’s so nice to be able to eat pizza again! Stay tuned for painting madness this week.
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