Kitchen before and after

As I mentioned yesterday, my hubby and I did a kitchen makeover last winter.  Granted it was a small change, our house is new and we love everything, but I wanted a little ummphh.  Something to make the hours I spend in the kitchen a little more fun. This is also the first house that we have ever owned and after 7 years of marriage (and renting) I had been seeing ideas and projects that I wanted to try.  According to my DIY BF's, (Do-It-Yourself Best Friends) all the HGTV pros, this would be a fairly simple project and my hubby and I could do it.  So what if we have never laid a tile in our lives.

I watched a few online tutorials and felt confident that we could handle it.  First, we headed to Lowe's to look at tile, I wasn't impressed so I started an online search.  The hubs was a little anxious about ordering tile online without seeing it, but when I saw this tile I knew it was meant to be.

It was named Rocky Road, I have a love of ice cream that is second to none. Second, it was $5.95 a sheet and on sale for an additional 15% off.  It also went with our colors and our vision perfectly.
So, I figured out how many I needed and ordered those babies. There was even a handy dandy calculator that helped me determine how many I needed.

We did have to get some adhesive, grout mix and sealer from Lowe's as well as a float trial, all that set us back about $30.

Since the tiles came in a 13x13 sheet with a mesh backing we didn't need a wet saw to cut them, whew! That insured that we came out of this project with the same 20 fingers we started with.  We would suggest some glass nippers though if you need something to help around outlets and light switches.

On day one we applied adhesive to the back and secured the tiles to the wall.  Here is a pic after day 1:

Day 2 we grouted. And wiped. Grouted. Wiped. Panicked about hazy look.  Grouted more, wiped more. We used a cheesecloth to help get the cloudiness out and all was right again.  Wiping away the grout was by far the hardest part of the process.

Here is an after peek:

Here is a kitchen before:

 

And here is an after:

and another:

Here is the project breakdown:
Tiles: we got them from modwalls.com, they were $105 including shipping
Other stuff from Lowe's $30
=$135

Our budget for this was $150 so we were in under budget.  And the best part, about a week after we finished we got an email from Modwalls asking us to send photos of our job so we happily sent some.  They quickly responded and asked if they could use them for their website, in return they would give us a $100 credit.  SWEET!  I couldn't click send fast enough! Scope us out here and here on their site.

We plan to cash in our credit this winter to add a little glitz to our bathroom, we are trying to decide between a few options:

Costa Rica Blend

Kahuna Blend

What do you think? Which one should we go with next?