It’s no secret, we’ve been working on our kitchen since we moved in. We set some goals early on, and now we’re finally meeting them. One of those goals was to paint the 4″ x 4″ ceramic tile that goes around almost the entire kitchen.
That’s a before shot. With our coffee bar and decor removed, it doesn’t look that dissimilar from when we moved in. We knew we wanted to paint the tiles and also add some color to the walls, but there were more important things to be done in the kitchen first, so we put this off.
Our latest and greatest investment, our new countertops, were carefully covered with brown paper.
We worked our way top to bottom, and painted the trim and the drywall first. We went from a stained off-white color to Valspar’s Vanilla Steam. We were worried the color might be a little pink, or that it might be a little too subtle, but once everything dried, it was bold and matched the swatch pretty well.
Since we were snowed in and we wanted to finish the project in one day, we used Scotch Blue Painter’s Tape for Delicate Surfaces on the freshly painted wall before priming and painting the tiles.
To prepare the tiles for priming and painting we used Klean-Strip Odorless Mineral Spirits, an eco friendly alternative to regular mineral spirits. We were worried about the paint not sticking to the ceramic tiles going into this project. We tested out Valspar’s latex multi-purpose primer on a few loose tiles we had from the bathroom and it worked really well. We ended up using one quart to cover the entire kitchen, which has tile about 4 feet high the whole way around.
To cover the grout and tile evenly, we went around with a brush in the hard to reach places and then followed up with a roller. This worked for both the primer and the paint itself.
We used the same color paint we used on our cabinets and trim, Du Jour by Valspar. To cover the tiles we used paint and primer in one in a semi gloss. The decision to use semi gloss was sort of unintentional, because that’s what we had already purchased for our trim. It ended up working out really well, and we only needed one coat on top of the primer. I can’t say enough good stuff about that primer.
There it is, that’s the finished product. Coffee bar and decor back in place, it looks modern and updated. This kitchen has come a long was since it was pictured in its listing photo, but there will be more on that next time. Stay tuned for a final detailed timeline of what we’ve done to the kitchen.
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