Picking Backsplash Tile and 40th Birthday Reflections

Well my blogger friends, I am officially 40. How did that happen? I still feel about 25… that was a great year. Despite how unreal it feels to be in my fourth decade on the planet, I am happy to be here. When I look back over my other decade milestone birthdays, this is by far the happiest one.

I celebrated my tenth birthday with a big party with many friends, but we moved that week from Michigan to Pennsylvania, so the celebration was marred for me by the loss of my life as I knew it.

I have no recollection of my twentieth birthday. I know that I was back in New York for the summer, and I am fairly certain that I was out in College Town in Ithaca with my friend Annette, but the details are hazy. My life was in turmoil at the time my parents were separated, I was nearing the end of a relationship with a boyfriend, and I was working ridiculous hours to try to support myself through college. All I could think was that I wanted to finish college and enter the real world.

My thirtieth birthday was one of the lowest points of my life. In 2004 I was engaged to the supposed love of my life. We were to be married on my thirtieth birthday. The church and reception all were booked, the invitations were mailed, and then a month before the wedding was to take place, it all came to a terrible end. My loving family rallied around me with a party on what was to have been my wedding day, and I loved them for it,  but my heart was broken into a million pieces.

There were times when I was certain that I would never recover from that heartbreak, but I am thrilled to announce that I am happier today than I have been for most of my life. In the end, I found real love. I am healthy and financially stable and have an adorable little house that is getting cuter all the time. Life is good.

If you only came to see what tile we picked for the kitchen backsplash, I am sorry to have rambled on about my life for so long. I am just happy to be happy today! Without further delay here is the kitchen tile… OK. I lied there will be a bit of a delay in the revelation as I tell the story of how we picked the tile.

Two years ago, shortly after our wedding, I began looking for tile for the backsplash. I knew that I wanted something simple and white, and I was working with a tight budget. I was leaning towards subway tile but had not fully committed. After weeks of searching endlessly, I came across this small subway tile. I knew it was the one; Douglas was not fully convinced, but he approved the purchase.

We bought the tile with Lowe’s gift cards we had received for our wedding. Then, it sat in our basement taunting me every time I would go down there. I was beginning to think that we would never have our backsplash. Here you can see the tile in our hoarder basement before we started organizing it. Finding it is a little like spotting Waldo. If you want a clue look to the end of this post.

This winter while discussing my dream with my brother, I brought out the tile for him to look at. He took some measurements and pointed out that we would be left with a half tile along the top of the backsplash. That would mean a lot, too much, cutting. Neither Douglas nor I wanted to do that, and so we tried to come up with an alternate solution.

After many months, I thought that perhaps we could find another tile in black that could split the difference. Douglas liked the idea, and off we went to Home Depot with the measurements to look for something. There were about six different sizes of black tile to choose from, but the 3″ square tile was perfect.

Back home there was more measuring to see how far up we wanted to make the stripe. Finally, we discovered that if we placed five rows of white tiles up from the counter, the row of black and then six more rows of white, it would fit perfectly. Something that we had not counted on was that the black tile would line up exactly with the outlets. How ideal is that?

The next step was to cut all of the tile and lay it out to make sure that we had enough and that it would all fit correctly. Crème supervised to make sure that we did it correctly.

Next week, I will be back to show you how we got it up on the wall. I hope that all of your projects are going well in the meantime. Tell me what you are up to this summer.

Happy Homemaking!

P.S. The tile is under the dresser… in boxes.