DIY Painted Subway Tile

So I've been getting bored lately so I decided that my next victim would be the Kitchen dun dun duuunnnnn.

Our kitchen seriously lacks any personality.  White cupboards, beige counter, purplish grey walls. Blah!  

Now, we didn't want to really sink any money into it since we know at some point we were going to rip out a wall and completely change everything about it.  It will likely be a few years before we tackle this Kitchen reno since it'll be expensive and totally invasive.

So I'm left with a drab kitchen that I hate and I've been trying to come up with cheap ways to spruce it up.  I thought that adding some type of backsplash would look great. However I knew that it didn't make sense to spend $200- $400 on a backsplash right now. I came across a tutorial on Sawdust and Embryo's blog that described how to paint your back splash.  Loved this idea!  Not only is it cheap, but if I end up hating it, I can just paint over it   WIN WIN!

So based on Beth's tutorial, I started painting some back splash ideas on paper.  The first two back splashes I painted I was trying to mimic real stone. 

I didn't like how the colours looked with the counter though.  Plus I thought they were a bit boring. Next I tried just a plain subway tile in my signature blue. I loved it!  And it took way less time to paint since I wasn't trying to mimic stone.

  

So here are the supplies you'll need:

1/4" painters tape < I looked everywhere for this!  Save yourself some time and just buy it online.

Paint colour for the 'tile'

White paint & primer for the 'grout'

Regular painters tape

Xacto knife

Paint tray and roller

1. Prime & paint the area white for the grout.  I let mine dry for a couple days.

2. Start taping your grid for whatever design you like.  I followed Beth's instructions here.  Beware that taping takes FOREVER!!

3. Paint over it.  Remove tape right away so your grout lines stay nice and crisp.

4. DONE!  

I'm totally loving the cute cottage vibe now :)  There is some bleeding that happens with the tape so my OCD was a bit active. I just took a small artist paint brush and touched up the spots that were bugging me. No worries!  Love it! All for under 60 bucks! Can't beat it :)

~Bri~