Backsplash Tile and Full Height Slab

The Wall Has to Be Made First

Almost every backsplash complaint we get called out to look at is a wall problem wearing tile. Lippage where one tile stands proud of its neighbour, a course that climbs as it crosses the room, a gap behind the counter that keeps opening. None of those are set by the tile. They are set by what the tile was stuck to.

After a splash demo the wall is rarely flat. There is torn paper, ridges of old mastic, and in the older plaster homes around the Wood Streets a wall that leans back a quarter inch over its height. Large format tile is unforgiving of all of it, because a flat tile bridging a hollow has nowhere to go but out of plane.

So the wall gets floated. Skim, sand, check with a straightedge in both directions, and only then does anything get set.

Full Height Slab

Carrying the counter material up the wall behind the range and the sink run has two real advantages. There is no grout back there, which behind a gas burner is worth something, and in a small kitchen the surface reads as one plane instead of a band with a line through it.

The part worth paying attention to is the match. We cut the splash from the offcut of your own slab and set it so the veining continues upward rather than restarting. That means deciding on the full height splash before the slab is cut, not after, which is the practical reason we ask about the wall on the first visit.

It is not cheap. Another twenty square feet of stone at slab prices is often a third again on the job.

Tile

Tile goes on after the counters are in and the sink is set, so the first course lands on a finished, level surface and can be held a fraction clear rather than jammed down.

Layout starts from the features, not the corner. Centre on the hood, or on the window over the sink, and let the cut tiles fall at the ends where cabinets shade them. A field of subway tile that runs out with a sliver against the range hood is a layout that started in the wrong place.

Outlet boxes need extension rings. Adding backer, thinset and tile pushes the finished wall out by roughly half an inch, and a receptacle left sitting back in the old box is both an inspection item and the reason cover plates rock.

The Joint at the Counter

The line where splash meets counter is a movement joint. Cabinets carry load, stone expands and contracts, walls shift with the seasons, and in the dry inland air here materials give up moisture fast. Grout in that joint cracks, usually within the first summer and usually along the sink run.

It gets a flexible sealant matched to the grout colour. Expect to cut it out and renew it every few years behind the sink. That is maintenance, not failure.

What We Will Talk You Out Of

Setting tile the same day the counters go in, because the silicone under the sink has not cured and the slab is still being adjusted. Running a full height splash behind a west facing window in a room that bakes all afternoon, if the material is a pale quartz. And any layout that puts a cut narrower than about a third of a tile in the most visible corner of the room.

Call (951) 795-0209 and we will look at the wall before quoting the tile.