Saturday, April 15, 2006

Kitchen! I am the Sticky-tile Empress!

What is she going on about? I'm really good at doing things with sticky tile (self-stick vinyl tiles for the normal people reading), many of which sticky tile was never intended to do. I've done my grandmother's bathroom, in such a way that it looks like we spent FAR more than 100 bucks on it. Mosaic, fancy cuts, etc. I get crazy with the stuff. It's wonderful when you want something to be temporarily livable/pretty until you can do the real renovations, and you've got a small budget.

Anyway, I stuck it to the Awful Tileboard in our kitchen toady, and to the Hideous Vomit-and-Cream Formica counter, as well as to our floor. The floor was fairly normal and straightforward, and has come out BEAUTIFULLY. Here we have photos of my kitchen cabinets, just about complete:



That's the temporary, cheeeeep new countertop solution: heavy-duty sticky tile, with a couple of painted strips of mdf stop moulding.



It looked so sexy I had to get our new knives out (housewarming gift to ourselves) and make them pose against it.



And this is what the counter looked like prior to covering it up. Yes, it is in 3 pieces, for no apparent reason. I stabilized it with the painted moulding strips prior to attaching Ye Olde Sticky Tile. It came out great.


I must, at this point, add that I am Very Impressed with the latex surface primer suggested by some nice sales monkey at one of the big home-improvement stores we've haunted recently. It DOES actually help the tiles adhere. VERY WELL - so well, in fact, that there will be no repositioning of tiles. If you screw up, scrape the tile up and get a new one out. This means that my normally non-feasible technique of covering up hideous formica tileboard (done it before, natch) with sticky tiles is now much more practical.

Also here is a preview of my plans for the sink cabinet:




This will, of course require Even More Paint, plus more sticky tiles (I have those) and I have to make another trip to the hardware store to buy the right size nylon washers (so I can replace the drawer slide roller wheels and my drawers will hang straight). It's SOOOO obviously a mockup, but that still looks better than what's there.

You may have noticed some of the doors hanging open, above. There's a reason. The closure springs are mostly gone. A question, for anyone who may be reading this: Do you know of a source for replacement hinge-spring assemblies for old steel cabinets? I'm fairly good at research, but this has me stumped.

2 comments:

  1. That backsplash is ingeneous! Love it.

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  2. I googled sticky tiles.. came across this. I love what you have done and must ask about the counter? did you just lay the tiles as normal or ... and what kind of paint was it? I am just looking into buying a new house and with a tiny budget can only afford sticky tile but I would love to redo the counters! If you could please email me at teenaagemommy72188@hotmail.com that would be great.
    OR if you would prefer you could visit my msn space at http://mommy72188.spaces.live.com
    I look forward to hearing from you

    Carrissa

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