tile accomplished!

Finally finished putting in the tile this week! Last week we laid it, Thursday we grouted it and yesterday my Mom and I spent a couple hours buffing it clean. Let me just say... tiling is not as easy as you would think or as easy as the people at the tile store like to make it sound; just dont believe them. It's a pretty stressful job because you are limited in time. From the second you mix your thinset or grout, you only have about 20 mins to use it until it dries up and becomes useless... so laying tile is kind of like running a marathon. You've gotta keep up the pace and dont stop until the job is done! Luckily, we made it through our first tiling job and are pretty happy with the results. We saved a lot of money doing it ourselves and we learned a lot along the way.

The only change I would make would be to have gone with the black grout instead of the dark grey grout. The lady at the tile store did a good job of convincing us that we would absolutely hate having dark grout and I almost believed her until I got home and remembered my true vision for the tile. And the more I walked the streets of Chicago, the more I was confirmed in my thinking that darker is better. Just about every vintage door stoop in this city has mosaic tile with dark black or dark grey grout, so I had my answer... we ended up returning the light 'wisper grey' she convinced us to buy and getting the charcoal. It's a dark grey, but not true black. I'm definitely happy with the dark grey but next time I'm going all the way with the black! =)

Lesson #37.6793: Always trust your gut when it comes to design desisions.