Faux Tile

Before I show off my kitchen makeover, I thought I would show you some of my fake tile projects. When we first moved in this house, there were a lot of initial expenses so I tried to do as much decorating as I could on as little money as possible. I covered the awful cabinets with tin instead of replacing them like I really wanted to do. (You’ll see that when I do the before and after photos – next post). I then wanted to pull things together in the kitchen with a tile backsplash but that wasn’t part of the budget. So if it sits still, it gets painted. Yep, that’s right I painted a tile backsplash.

I had done this trick several years ago in an apartment that was as bland as it could be. I painted a faux brick wall to give it some interest. Most people had to go touch it to be sure it wasn’t real. I wish I had a photo to show you. But here’s the tile I did here in the kitchen.

I painted the base color or the color of the “grout” first. After it was good and dry, I taped off my grout lines using gout tape.

Can you believe there is such a thing? It’s basically masking tape that is cut thin. It’s about ¼ inch like the width of grout. You might be able to find it in some craft stores. I got mine from Ace Hardware for just under $5.00.

Once you have your lines taped off then you can paint you tile color. You can do one or several colors. You should use at least 2 to give the tile some depth. On mine I rubbed a silver shimmer on the top edges of each “tile” to make it look more real. On the small square tiles I used the stamps to embellish them. (Look familiar??? Remember the magnets?)

When I did the brick, I use 3 shades of red and dabbed them on with a stencil brush to give it the look of natural brick and shadows. A stencil brush is round with a flat contact area. You use it to “tap” paint onto your project.

For a short time here I had one of the walls painted purple. It was supposed to help balance the green walls and the orange-ish tone of the wood furniture. (Didn’t work) Anyway, I wanted to pull all the colors together so I tried to re-do the tile backsplash. I painted my grout color and then taped off a brick pattern. Then I randomly painted the bricks in all the different colors of the room.

I never really liked the look so it didn’t make it around the rest of the kitchen. I was going to come up with something different then I decided it was just time to re-do EVERYTHING.

Wait ‘til you see what is up there now!