Grout Finished

I finished grouting the counter top and back splash last night. It was a lot more work than I had anticipated. Over all the Epoxy grout was not difficult to work with, but the float is heavier than a standard grout float so by the end of Monday my hands just hurt, but the counter top was done.

The back splash was more of a pain because there was not as much room to work the grout in with the float. I ended up just using my fingers to press the grout in then I finished up with the float to clean the excess of the tile. That worked pretty well and I was able to finish up the back splash last night.

Freezing the grout does lengthen it's cure time so I used a bucket of ice water while i worked to give myself more time to grout and wash. I even froze the leftovers from Mondays work and used them on Tuesday and while the grout was a little thicker it applied nearly the same. Visually there is no difference between the epoxy grout that i froze over night and the batch that I made fresh which is very handy as the pot life the the grout is only around an hour at 70 degrees F room temperature.

Pictures to come.

Tile layout and lighting test

Friday night we went to Lowe's to pick up the tile, that was more painful than I anticipated however I still think that we are going to be happier with the end result than we would have if we have gone with formica. Of course they did not have enough of the bullnose tile for us so that is on order they gave us an estimate of a week to a week and a half. Of course that was really the component we needed to get things started. Oh well at least we had a pretty relaxing weekend.

I of course could not resist unboxing some of the countertop tiles and doing a test layout. I think it's going to be really nice.
I'm also hoping to order the light soon however before we get to that point we need to decide on a length. According to the resources I have found online for pendants over an island or peninsula you want them to be 72" of of the floor. Our ceiling is 7'5" which would give us 17" for overall fixture length. I didn't want the chain to be too short so I bumped that up to 18" and then as a test I hung a string from the ceiling 18" long. That looks about right to me. Chris is of average height so I had him stand on the inside of the counter top and look towards to door and it didn't seem to be in his face so I think that will work nicely. As someone who is on the short side I have absolutely no concept of these things.

You can also see in this picture that we have the pantry door remounted. I think it looks really good. If the tile gets in by next weekend we will be tiling. If not we'll be sanding the floor, either way fun for everyone.