It's the Little Things

Little things mean a lot. Especially in the home improvement/DIY realm. In my kitchen, the grout had disintegrated between the tile and the laminate counter top. It just looked dirty.

A little bit of caulk goes a long way, though!

While I don't consider myself a caulking expert, here are a couple of my tips:

• make the hole in the caulking cartridge smaller than you think necessary because you can always make it bigger, but it's impossible to make smaller
• once you start with a bead of caulk, keep going
• your finger and some water does a great job at smoothing out the bead
• have some heavy duty paper towels or rags to wipe your finger on and to wipe up the excess caulk

I also laid down a back splash in the bathroom with a limestone and glass mosaic. I bought 2 sheets of tile for less than $20. I tried to get the vertical seam to be, well, seamless. I see a lot of applications where the seam is a little bit wider and you can tell right where the sheets stop and start. Even with my efforts, it is not perfect, but I think the center seam looks pretty good.

I used a pre-mixed adhesive & grout compound. I also used a dish scraper to lay down the adhesive/grout and then went back over it with a grout type of comb to give the mix some ridges. I then taped it into place with painters tape while it set up.

After the adhesive dried according to package directions, I grouted it using the same little dish scraper and a sponge to wipe up the extra grout. (And in this picture my hands look just like my mom's hands).

Neither project took very long to do, but went a long way towards making things look more finished.

I am grateful for so many of the little things in my life, especially in the DIY world.

What are the little things in your life?  Nicole

I'm participating in Nester's 31 day series. Click here to access the index of gratitude posts.