The Money Shot--Backsplash Tile Brings the Glamour

Now that Seattle's the hottest it has ever been, Brian is hard at work again, after trips to Africa and Montana in the last month. In between trips, he did most of the backsplash tile in the kitchen. When I look down the hall into the kitchen, I hardly recognize it as my house! It's far too glamorous!

As mentioned in an earlier post, we got the tile from Ecohaus. It is manufactured by Oceanside Glasstile. The mosaic color is called Shire and it's made of recycled glass and each piece is cut by hand. To minimize the differences in the tile shapes (due to the hand cutting), I chose a dove grey grout color instead of white. There are three colors that are part of the mosaic--olive, ice blue, and sort of a Prussian blue. The tile has a bronzey iridescent sheen. Here's a closeup of the tile--you can see the iridescence where my flash reflected.


Here's a shot of Brian putting in the tile:


And now for the kitchen! Here are a few angles of the main kitchen. There's a little tile in the sunroom too, but it's not quite done yet. Check out also in these photos the handles, which are now all on.






Lastly, a small detail in the sunroom. In order to save storage space in the cabinets, we picked up a couple rails from Ikea and Brian installed them over the windows. I can now hang my cookware there using S-hooks. Here's just one of the rails. The other is over the window to the right.


While all this has been going on, I've had the chance to start putting away all my gear as well as cook in my new kitchen! The use of space has been amazing--my kitchen feels huge now! Several things have made a big difference.

First, tucking the fridge away into the corner so it no longer was a huge, imposing block in the middle of the kitchen has made all the difference. It's not only allowed us to have a long run of countertop, but visually the kitchen now has a flow and the skylight complements the space, making it feel even bigger.

Also, flowing the kitchen into the sunroom with the same cabinets and counters has made that space ultra usable--a mini kitchen in itself. It has been great to make cookies and pies in there--so much counterspace and all my baking items stowed in the lower cabinets.

One of my favorite parts of the new kitchen was initially one of the most controversial elements--the 8-inch deep counters and cabinets where the basement door used to be. We thought these wouldn't be hugely useful since they were so shallow, but as it turns out, the counter is perfect for plating! Now I can line up four dinner plates and plate my meals directly from the stove to the left. In my old kitchen I barely had room to set down a serving bowl, so this is quite miraculous! The upper cabinets are also perfect for two-deep glassware storage, and in the lower cabinets I keep my Oxo Pop containers, which fit so perfectly it's as if the cabinets were built specifically for them! A huge thanks to Ray and Brian, both for coming up with this unique design and for convincing me it was the right thing to do!

Last, the dishwasher is now directly across from all the tableware storage, so all I need to do when I unload the dishwasher is open all the cabinets and drawers and I can put everything away without hardly moving. Also, it's worth mentioning that the Bosch dishwasher I picked out really is as quiet as everyone says!

So, that's the latest--quite a lot! We've still got a few more things to do--a new window, finishing up the tile, several details in the new stair area, etc. I'll keep you posted!