Troy has been working on the trim on the kitchen island over the last few weeks. When he put it on the other counters, he stained it before he installed it. He found that it got a little too abused during the installation and then needed to be touched up, so this time he installed it first and stained it in place. It worked pretty well.
He went ahead and did the nails the "right way" and countersunk them and filled in the holes with wood filler, but he actually likes the look of the flush nails on the counter trim better. He thinks that besides being more work, this looks more obvious and actually detracts more. Live and learn.
Once his trim was stained and urethaned, I was up for grouting. I didn't get to it for about a week and then was sick with a cold this week (a good excuse), but this morning I got to it. I pulled a Troy and fit it into a tight space before going to the ND game today.
Took about an hour and a half from start to finish (including clean up, of course), and it looks great (in my opinion). Although I was afraid the grout would emphasize the uneven spacing, it really just brings everything together. I also was a little unsure about the colour because I thought I wanted something more red to make it look like one piece. I couldn't find red and went with this bone or beige colour (I forget) because it matched the veins pretty well. Or I thought it would. It's not like I had the actual tiles with me in the store (they vary a lot anyway) and it's a little hard to get a feel for the colour from a tiny square swatch on the bag. But it worked out; it's good.
In this picture you can see how the finish is already failing (middle left of picture). We don't know what has affected the tile (tomatoes, a juice, water???) but this kind of "clouding" has turned up in a couple locations. I've come to grips with it...and some day we'll figure out how to refinish the tiles and fix it. But it will just happen again, so I'm not going to get too uptight about it. (I'm not. Really.)
Having accomplished that, I set off to meet Troy for the game. A bit of a dull go for a while but ended with a pretty exciting fourth quarter and triple overtime, with the final result of a win and 9-0 for the season! Go Irish!
Final score (finally!)
Happy fans:
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