HOW TO PAINT TILE BACKSPLASH

Hello lovelies!

Another quarantine DIY coming to you from – Liz’s ‘builder grade’ kitchen. Okay so just a little back story –  Jake and I plan to stay in our current house maybe another couple of years’ish.  I actually purchased this home before Jake and I were together and it was perfect for just lil ole me butttt now with Jake + Tanner (our dog aka child) it is a little ‘snug’ and we usually all end up in the same corner of the kitchen somehow. With that being said, our kitchen is not my dream kitchen by any means but we haven’t really wanted to pour too much money + time into it since we don’t plan to stay her too much longer sooo, we decided to PAINT OUR BACKSPLASH for a quick + easy facelift! Our backsplash was a basic brown’ish tile and that along with our dark cabinets and brown granite was just a lot of BROWN. I decided to paint it WHITE to brighten the room up a little bit. I believe it was a great bang for our buck and highly recommend it if you have a backsplash you aren’t loving but don’t want to completely replace it right now!

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

Note: I purchased all paint paint supplies from Home Depot

• Goo gone paint cleaner spray 
• Some old rags on hand for all the ‘oopsy’ moments 
• Painter’s tape 
• 1 Paint roller trays 
• 2 Paint roller tray liners 
• 1 Medium sized Paint brush 
•  1 baby paint brush – good for detail clean-up at end, etc. 
• 2 Foam rollers – 1 for primer + 1 for paint 
•  KILZ All-Purpose Interior/Exterior Primer 
• Behr Premium Interior Semi-Gloss Cabinet & Trim Enamel in the color: Alabaster (We purchased a Quart in both the Primer + Paint due to our kitchen being pretty small and we didn’t use all of either)

Approximate total on these supplies: $50 – so worth it! 

LET’S GET STARTED!

1. First, I used soap+water+old rag to thoroughly clean the backsplash and moved the oven away from the wall.
2. Next, I taped off along the wall,  top of the backsplash that hits the cabinets, as well as where the granite meets the backsplash.  I took my time here to get the tape as clean/perfect as possible since I know this would affect the final outcome and how happy I would be with it. 
3. Now it is time to prime the surface! Switching off between a small roller and a medium paint brush, I applied 2 coats of KILZ All-Purpose Interior/Exterior Primer. I was sure to let the first coat dry to the touch before doing the second coat. I did all of this at night and then didn’t start painting until the next morning. TIP: this primer is white which was perfect because I was also painting the backsplash white BUT, if you plan to paint a different color you can get the primer tinted to be closer to your paint color which I recommend from another project we did. If you take it to the paint counter at Home Depot/Lowes, etc they should be able to assist in getting it tinted close to your paint color.
4. The next morning when I woke up I switched off between the small roller+ medium paint brush to apply my first coat of the Behr Cabinet & Trim Enamel Paint (Alabaster white). I actually did a total of 3 coats and waited an hour or so between coats to make sure it was dry each time. 
5. Right after finishing the 3rd coat, I removed the painters tape slowly. 
6. For the most part, after removing the tape I was happy with how it looked. There were a couple of stubborn areas + areas that needed a little touch up so I took a baby brush to fix those areas. 
7. Now I used the goo gone paint cleaner spray to clean any specs that got onto the granite/appliances. 

Not bad for $50, yall! I am pleased with the change and like that it brightens up the kitchen some. I am thinking about adding some gold hardware next to make it look more finished. It never ends around here, folks!!!