Preparing for my back splash

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My kitchen makeover is dragging on a lot longer than I ever thought it would. I know that it always takes twice as much time and money as originally estimated. As far as the money goes, I’m way under budget. Budget? What budget? Mostly free and very cheap is more like it.

I’ll just be talking about one section of the kitchen today, the area to the right of the sink. I had that horrid counter matching back splash for years.

Removing that piece was one of the first steps I took when I started this makeover. I felt that if I removed it, there was no going back. It had been (liquid) nailed to the drywall.

Suddenly Thanksgiving was approaching and I had no back splash. I had actually won a back splash from a blog, but it was very delayed in shipping, so I declined the prize. To make the kitchen more presentable for the holidays, I quickly slapped some of the wall paint on the backsplash to “make do”. At this point I still needed to swap out that gfi plate cover. (it has been swapped out). Notice the new white blind on the kitchen door that replaced the 30 year old aluminum blind.

I got several Home Depot gift cards for Christmas, so I thought I could splurge on some tile. At the store these colors looked white, gray and taupe.

I bought two sections. When I put it in the kitchen, the gray looked blue, the taupe looked gray and the white looked less white. I took them back to the store.

This is what the liquid nails looked like after I painted it. I tried to scrape off the leftover adhesive.

How do you think I got it to scrape?

I wish I could say I thought of it myself, but I didn’t!

A hairdryer! You would think that after I saw Rose @ Confessions of a Curbshopaholic used her hair dryer to remove her vinyl tile, that I would have known it would work for this adhesive. But alas, no, I googled it. If you have never used a Purdy 6 in 1 tool you should pick one up! It’s such a sturdy scraper!

I used a board to get an idea of how much of the adhesive had to come off.

I drew a line so that I wouldn’t work myself to death removing adhesive that didn’t need to be removed.

I was amazed at how easily it came off when hot. Perhaps it had been loosened slightly by having the latex paint on it for the last two months?

If the back splash was finished, I’d show you. I hope to get it finished today. I’m also working on switching out the faucet. I’ve never done plumbing before! The old one came out pretty easily. I hope the new one goes in quickly. We’ll see!
Check back tomorrow and see if I’ve made any progress. Any thoughts on what the back splash will be? IF you’re a blog friend that I have shared the info with, please don’t spill the beans!
gail

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