Kitchen makeover: Day 8

Yesterday was all about the wall tiling. To start with there was some bare plaster that we're tiling over so we needed to prime the walls. I feel a bit bumped about this as the primer cost almost a tenner - when I read the back of the tile adhesive they actually recommend a  bit of PVA glue and water to do the same job.

The primer took four hours to dry so we used the time to go off to a tiling place and get some 3mm spacers. The bloke in the tiling shop gave us some good advice about marking out from the centre of the wall so that you're not left with too small gaps to cut tiles for at the edges.

We also cut and trimmed the end strips that we'd glued to the wortops the previous day. Another job was to fix the upstands to the worktops using a bead of silicon gel to keep the water from getting underneath. The way we've used the upstands is a bit erm, *different*. As we haven't replaced the cupboards we're stuck with the way they'd arranged the old ones. They'd made them extra deep, which meant that the old worktops didn't overhang the cupboards at all (looked odd and not the easiest to clean!). We decided to have a bit of an overhang, which meant having a gap at the back, so we've laid the upstands flat to cover the gap.

After the upstands were in place it was time to tile over the top. I was slopping the adhesive on and sticky the tiles to the wall while Radka worked out the pattern - amazing how difficult it is to create a random pattern!

I was really impressed with the adhesive. I was expecting it to be quite difficult to get the tiles to stick to the wall but they actually went on very easily (it's the next morning now and they're still all in place!).

We tiled the gap behind the cooker so that hopefully it's easier to clean than the wallpaper that had been there. We've also put a 3 tile high border around the worktops.

So, we're nearly there. Grouting and little jobs like the skirting and painting the coving is left to do (plus I need to cut a 50cm bit of worktop and tile above a stand alone cupboard that we've been using to do all the tile cutting from). Then it's time for a well earned trip to the pub...