I have been dying to do some updates in the kitchen and slowly we have been updating our kitchen to a point that it is probably my favorite room in my home.

A few weeks ago we started the kitchen update by replacing our old sink faucet with the The Cassidy™ Single Handle Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet with Touch2O Technology from Delta Faucet- Our first step to a more inviting smart home!

It was love at first touch

I loved the elegant lines of the faucet and once I tried the Touch2O feature I was hooked…Sorry standard faucets, but I could never go back to a traditional faucet after using the convenient, mess free cassidy Single Handle Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet with Touch2O Technology.

Touch2OTechnology is the coolest feature I have seen in a faucet… I am a bit of a nut when it comes to clean hands while cooking and absolutely hate touching the faucet if I am handling raw meat or any other food that can cross contaminate anything in the kitchen. However, I inevitably touch the faucet several times while cooking as I am constantly washing my hands. This is where the Delta Cassidy Touch2o comes in to play as all you need to do to activate the faucet is simply tap anywhere on the spout or handle of the faucet with your hand, wrist, or forearm or even your elbow to start and stop the flow of water…Awesome right?

Even better, after about 2 minutes of no motion activity, the faucet shuts down by itself…Did I mentioned I love this faucet? That’s right, if you go to fill up a pot with water or something, and get distracted in another room, your faucet knows and is smart enough to turn itself off.

After that initial upgrade, I wanted more…So our next DIY project was the kitchen back splash, so we headed to Home Depot and chose among the different tiles they offer and went with the Venetian glass tile.

This was DH first time tackling a project like this (actually his first time laying any tile), so after a few YouTube videos, he decided he was ready for the task and started to work….We found all the materials needed at our local Home Depot (we bought a wet saw from Amazon, but upon reflection, it would probably have been better to rent one from Home Depot … yes – you can rent tools there too).

The first step was to turn off the power to all of the outlets on the wall and then remove the faceplates and pulling the outlets out so that tile could be placed behind them. The next step is to lay out the tile to make sure you have the tile laid out ahead of time. Then you want to measure and cut the tiles and then prep the walls. The walls must be clean and ready to hold the mastic (tile glue). The mastic can start to dry pretty quick, so don’t do more than you are ready for at any time. He prepped with the mastic probably 2-3 feet at a time. One really big tip he found out that was key to doing a proper tile job is to make sure you place enough tile so that the outlets fit inside, but the outer edge where the screws go in are on the outside of the tile. This insures that when you screw them in, that the faceplates lay nice and flush with your new tile job. ….. Selecting the right grout is really important; we discovered first hand that the different color grouts, can completely change the looks on the tile.

We started with a light muddy brown colored grout and after probably 6 ft. into the process decided that was not the right color. You don’t do the grouting process until after the tiles are set in place and dried, so you can’t just rip off the tiles to clean them off. We had to work fast and rip all the grout out before it dried. That meant taking a butter knife and going between every single tile and getting rid of the grout.

This was a very tedious process working with a knife, sponge, and bucket of water constantly. After it was all done, we waited for it to dry and started over again with a black grout and the difference was incredible. While it is possible to do, changing the grout color is not a walk in the park, so play around with the colors and place it against the wall before install the tiles. We even found a trick afterwards that someone told us, which is to take a small section of tile and place it on a piece of wood and then grout that. This will let you know what the final product will look like without doing the whole wall ahead of time.

The trickiest part of the installation was the electric outlets as you will need to make sure you get the right cuts…Replace the outlets with the correct color ones (we replaced the white with black to complement the grout and tile color), which will complete the look!

The whole project budget came up to about $500/600 and I think the husband did an amazing job, what do you think?