How to Paint a Tile Back Splash – Revisited

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Can  you believe it’s August, and school is right around the corner???  Since it’s the beginning of a new month, we are going to revisit one of our most popular posts ever.  If you are new here, perhaps you didn’t know that a tile back splash can be painted.  Over a year after this project was completed, I am happy to report that it still looks perfect – as if I painted it yesterday.  Now let’s revisit the post.

 

Ever since we moved in, our intention was to paint the kitchen cabinets and change out the back splash.  Well, Mom and I painted the cabinets, but nothing ever happened to the back splash.  Dealing with the work and dirt of tearing out the old back splash and installing a new one was just not something Yankee and I were getting excited about.  We added a back splash to our kitchen in Syracuse, but that was a simple fix because there wasn’t an old one there in the first place to deal with.  After talking to kitchen designer Debra Hupman, who advised Mom on updating her kitchen last year, we learned that painting a tile back splash was an option.  We read about it, talked to people about it, looked at Pinterest, and read blogs, and decided that painting was the option we would go with at this time.  And finally, a year after moving in, our back splash is now white and wonderful.

 

It all started one Friday night.  Little Miss was in bed, and I thought, “Let’s just do this.” I had everything I needed on hand.  I shared this photo on Instagram.

 

 

First thing I did was really clean the tile.  I used Dawn soap to cut the grease, and then I took rubbing alcohol to really get at any remaining residue so I could apply an oil-based primer.   After it dried, I added two coats of the same paint I used for the cabinets, Pure White semi-gloss latex by Sherwin Williams.  Voila! That was it.  I think this is my easiest project yet that gave us the most bang for the buck.  Why did I take so long to do it?

 

Here it is  – the painted tile.  I am so happy with the way it turned out.  I have now put replacing our back splash at the bottom of our home’s to-do list.  This looks great!  Since we really aren’t scrubbing it or rubbing against it, the paint will pretty much go untouched which will make it last longer.

 

 

You can see we only have one white outlet, and that was the one we changed ourselves to USB outlet, which we love and use daily.  We plan to change out the cream outlets to white right away.

 

 

I am planning to add something interesting to that little rectangle over the stove.  One option is our custom monogram, and another option is a colorful platter.  What do you suggest?

 

Oh, and did I mention that we LOVE it?  What you can’t tell from looking at this picturesque scene is that the fan over the stove stopped working two days after we moved it.  It was 10 years old, so, we forgive it.  As I write this, Yankee is in the process of installing a new one and building a wooden box to hide it and make it blend in more with our cabinets.  Stay tuned.  We will be sure to share when it is finished.

 

 

Here is a quick peak of the kitchen before we painted the cabinets and back splash.  Our kitchen island gets lots of use and makes our kitchen an “eat-in kitchen” for with Little Miss’s breakfast and lunch.  We still eat all of our evening meals in the dining room, though, and will continue to do that.

 

 

I keep telling Yankee it’s just so bright in here, and I love it.

 

 

We both want to change out the pulls, but that will happen after the fan project is complete.

 

 

This is what the fan project is looking like right now.  As I said before…..stay tuned(;

Cheers!