How to Install a Subway Tile Backsplash

hey everybody I'm Daniel if you've been on the lowest channel for a little while you may know that I kind of have a thing for walls I'm excited that is pretty cool but today is a little different so I've been needing to do my backsplash at home for a long time I'm finally getting around to doing it and I'm thinking you know what I might as well film the project there might be some of you guys that are in the same place you've been planning it or putting off a backsplash project and maybe this would be helpful maybe to see me I muddled my way through it make some mistakes will help you and give you confidence to try it and do it better than me all right let's get to it if you want to make any major design changes to your kitchen you'll want to do that before you start tiling the two things I wanted to update beforehand or the expose shelves and the trim work for the shelves I'd originally hung them with basic brackets attached to the drywall on studs but I wanted those brackets to be more hidden behind the tile so I cut out the drywall and attached them directly to the studs so I know that's a weird way to do floating shelves but ended up really really strong and they're gonna be pretty hidden so I'm happy with them then for the trim work I just replaced the existing trim with some 4-inch MDF trim for a slightly more modern look oh and if you have any window sills or other trim that might be tricky to cut tiles around consider notching it out beforehand with an oscillating tool just use a tile as a gauge for how much to cut out and that brings me the tile so Lowe's has tons of wild and crazy' tile options dude oh my goodness that's awesome but at the end of the day this oversized 4 by 8 subway tiles stole my heart couple cool features to note number one you can also get these matching 4 by 4 tiles which will save us quite a few cuts number two these common subway tiles actually have tiny spacers built in so unless you want huge grout gaps you can just lay them without spacers and get a perfect sixteenth of an inch grout gap on every salad don't forget though you're still going to need to use some kind of removable spacer on the first row to account for expansion as far as how many tiles you need split your wall into rectangles and total up the square footage adding five to ten percent extra to account for cuts before you remove your outlet covers and all your appliances trace around everything with a pencil this will come in handy later to know what will be hidden and what you can see all right so behind the stove and really anywhere where your first row is going to be unsupported so where there's gonna be just open air underneath it you're gonna need to install a ledger board so what that is is basically a piece of one or some kind of material that's going to sit right even with the rest of it so our piece of wood will need to sit perfectly flush with that to give that first row a place to sit all right oh yeah probably sure to remove that first okay so one of the last steps before starting to tile is planning the layout there's several factors to consider here and every space is going to be different so I think the easiest approach is to just dry lay the first row on your countertop and adjust from there what you want to avoid is any slivers particularly in a highly visible area like right here this would be a pretty skinny cut all the way up and it's pretty visible so I can shift this over a little bit to help you'll just have to play with it and find the best option for your room alright so I think the most intimidating part of this project at least to me is cutting the tile the actual laying of the tile I'm not too worried about I think that'll be pretty simple basically just putting you know glue on the wall slapping them up there and grouting it later but the cutting is what I really want to make sure I know what I'm doing before I start this thing and really get in over my head so I've looked at the wall and I think we're gonna encounter three types of cuts so the first type of cut and the most common one I think we'll hit is just basic straight cuts so that's where we're up against the wall and we just have to do a straight cut on the tile that's pretty simple we're just going to use this tile cutter which scores along the line and then it breaks the tile into two pieces along that score line so really simple not messy so we can do it in there as we go in the kitchen so that'll be the majority of the cuts something else we're gonna hit is plunge cuts so that where we're gonna hit those brackets in the middle of a tile we're gonna need to hole out these tile as cleanly as we can so what we'll do there is use a diamond bit our diamond hole saw I guess it's called on a drill and you can drill into these things make a hole in the tile and then come back with this diamond jigsaw bit and hole out that hole pretty easily one thing to remember on that when you're using these diamond bits is you need to make sure the bit stays cool so we're gonna put water on the surface as we do it just to make sure you don't crack your tile by heating it up and mess up your bit and all that stuff so that's the second type the third type is the most complex is where we're gonna have these cutouts so like a corner cut or even like a three-sided cutout so can't really use our regular tile cutter when that because it would cut right through the tile it'd be a lot to jigsaw through so what we're gonna use is this tiles this is basically like a table saw for tile so if you're comfortable using a table saw pretty much the same mechanism you've got a fence to keep things straight and you've got measurements on here so you can be very precise so basically you'll need to cut along these edges as far as you can and then we're going to need to make some relief cuts to get that last side out and then once we have those relief cuts we can come back with tile nippers and nip that out and then use a tile file to kind of get it nice and smooth there so that's all the cuts we're gonna encounter let's start laying some tile first tile all right so for this first row and really anywhere where I'm going to be slip and tiled into a tight space I'm gonna actually back butter the mastic onto the tile so put it on the back of the tile directly I don't keep it a little cleaner on that first row and we'll just allow you to to get it in there easier rather than trying to spread it in a little crevice just want to try to get full coverage there [Music] all right so a couple things to note when cutting your tile around outlets and switches number one you want to make sure the power is off if I want to do anything stupid turn it off of the breaker beforehand secondly you're gonna try to get as tight a cut as you can to the receptacle but you need to make sure you leave these little holes expose right there because that's what's going to attach the receptacle back and you'll want to get too tight there and then thirdly since you're adding a little bit of distance between the receptacle and that electrical box back there you need to use either spacers to add some sturdiness to it or if you're using a really thick tile you may even have to get an electrical box extender that slips in there and gives you some extra room to attach that receptacle since this tiles are very thick I'm gonna use these spacers so these little spacers snap together so you can get a very customized height depending on the tile you're using and how far back your electrical box is set just looking at the depth of might I think of four stacks gonna work great for me and there you go it's a lot sturdier than just relying on these little flanges up here to sit against your tile the easiest way I found for getting precise cuts was using a sharpie and a speed square to kind of target in on the cutting zone and don't worry the Sharpie will wipe right off that slick tile Rock On Dude once you get going you'll find your rhythm between cutting and laying and it's gonna go faster and faster with each row just keep a level handy so you can check both your rows and your vertical grout lines alright well I've kind of run out of daylight so I can't really do many cuts I'm gonna go ahead and call it a day but I'm happy with my progress the lower sections where a lot of the cuts were so I got a lot of those out of the way so should go a little quicker once I get up there anytime you're doing a full wall like this by Bank on it taking a couple days unless you're way quicker than I am but a couple things to know when you're packing it up for the day you obviously want to close off your mastic you don't want that drawing out and then also any areas where you've got mastic just sticking out on the wall you want to clean that off it'd be a lot easier to do now get that smooth than letting it dry and trying to scrape it off the next day because the tile won't sit flat against there you want that off of there and other than that we'll be back at it again tomorrow [Music] it's a new day let's get tiling [Music] all right so this first row is totally set now which means we can remove our ledger board so with the ledger board out we've got a tile down from this row and it could be a little tricky anytime you tile downward because you don't have the support of gravity holding those tile into place but a trick you can do is use some painters tape and as you apply that next row just tape it to the row above and it'll just give it a little extra support so it doesn't want to slip down I'll show you what I mean [Music] and there it is easy peasy alright so there's some places you really don't need to tile like behind the fridge I'm gonna actually run a ledger board just a couple inches below where I know the top of the fridge is where I'd marked that way I don't have to tile any of this drywall because you'll just never see it alright so once you get to the ceiling here you've got a decision to make in my case ended up with less than an inch gap between a full tile and the ceiling so I don't really want to sliver up there I'm gonna end up doing some kind of a trim piece probably out of this MDF maybe like a two inch piece of MDF to cover that gap but if you had you know a two or three inch tile that you could put up the top or even bigger it might be worth just tiling it flush to the ceiling it's just gonna depend on where you end up in your pattern so I've got all the tile set in place everything looks pretty level on my cuts are pretty tight I'm happy with it the last major step we need to do is grouting so I was a little bit indecisive about the grout color initially I was thinking on a wall this big we need to go white because I don't want it to be too busy or overwhelming in this space but as I looked at it I wanted to also make sure we didn't lose any texture cuz I didn't want it to just feel totally neutral so I wanted to see what it would actually look like in this space with the lighting without putting it on the wall so what I did was I made this side by side grout test comparing a white grout with a mid-tone gray grout you can actually get many of the most common grout colors in these comp tubes so you don't have to mix up a full batch to test a color so after seeing how it would actually look in the room I decided to go with the white ground after all for grout gaps smaller than an eighth of an inch make sure to get unsanded grout I also added in this grout Maximizer it's a stain resistant additive that'll save me from needing to seal the grout at the end so full disclosure I kind of freaked out when I first started spreading the grout it looked pretty grey going on I wondered if I just didn't mix it right so luckily I had a buddy named Tyler who happens to be a Tyler that I could call and double check Willy definitely dry most Krauts they're darker when they're wet okay so I'm good yeah it's always a good idea to have someone on call when you're doing a big project like this whether that's a Lowe's employee a tradesman or just a handy friend so once you've got all the grout up there you're gonna go back with a damp sponge and very gently clean off the tiles and clean up those joints then you're gonna come back with a very lightly damp towel and do basically the same thing you may have to repeat this step a couple of times to get rid of that haze and get your tile perfectly clean and shiny all right so there's a few areas that are a little tricky to get the grout into like edges are under these brackets and that's when we get to use these little caulk tubes so it's basically just grout in there so it should match the color exactly but it comes in this tube so it's really easy to put into those gaps if you do need to drill into the tile once it's on the wall use a hole saw kit it temporarily attaches to the wall lets you drill through keeping water on the hole and then pops right off once you're done now it's the really gratifying part where you get to put the kitchen back together again so we're putting appliances back in we're installing shelves we're putting in trim to hide that gap at the top it's all coming together guys we did it we did it so glad to have this one done and off of my list I think it looks great hopefully watching this was encouraging and helps you feel pretty confident about trying it on your own I know it's a big project but if you break it into little steps not that crazy to give yourself a couple days you can knock it out a couple quick things before I go number one here's a screenshot of most of the tools and materials I used if you want to do something real similar to what I did number two if you're interested in seeing other creative wall designs I might suggest this little series number three if you want to stay up to date on all Lowe's how to's series like The Weekender are a little where home and other ones we got in the works go ahead and subscribe you won't regret it alright thanks for watching have a wonderful day [Music]

Channel: Lowe's Home Improvement

Views: 573,205

Keywords: how to, diy, lowe's, lowes, subway tile, install a backsplash, how to install a backsplash, diy tile backsplash, subway tile backsplash, installing tile, how to install tile, wall tile, lowes tile, lowes the wall, how to install a kitchen backsplash, tile backsplash installation, tile backsplash diy, how to install a backsplash in the kitchen, kitchen backsplash, backsplash installation, backsplash ideas, white subway tile, Daniel coleman, Daniel coleman lowe's

Id: bjjDGtBXt3w

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 30 2018