Bob Ingrassia

I just completed a task that lingered on the “Honey Do” list for years: Installing a back splash in our kitchen.

We bought marble subway tiles a few months back … and I finally got some time this month to tackle the job. The first task was removing the dingy bead board that was there when we bought the house.

No home-improvement job goes as expected. The unexpected hurdle in this one was the out-of-level counter. Turns out our counter slants down about an inch from left to right over a run of about eight feet.

That meant I needed to lay a first course of tile that made up the difference. Some Googling gave me the good advice of starting from the low side with a full-width tile and then working toward the high side, making each tile narrower as needed.

And that’s what I did. So check out that bottom row in the photos below. You’ll notice the tiles on the far right are taller than the ones on the left. That’s a lot of rip cutting!

Here’s what things looked like after Day 1:

And after Day 2:

This job called for a lot of cutting. There are about 125 tiles in this project, and 85 of those needed cutting. The wet saw from Menards got the job done!