...And I want a brick back splash...

I'm pretty sure my husband thought I was crazy when I said this.  We were planning out our kitchen remodel.  We had just uncovered the back of our fireplace in the dining room and decided to leave it open to the room - which you can see from the kitchen.  How cool would it be to have a brick back splash to coordinate??  VERY.

We talked about several ways to do this - cutting the faces off of brick seemed to be the best option, so that we could then set it like tile in the back splash area. There isn't room for a full brick - it would take up too much of the counter space and wouldn't fit behind the faucet.  So, something had to be done to make it work better.

Enter "thinbrick."  It's brick veneer basically.  5/8" thick slices of bricks designed to face a wall.  PERFECT.

Bryan had the morning off last Friday and set out to work on the back splash.  By the time I got home, he had finished setting basically half of the bigger section.  Oh my goodness.  It looks FABULOUS.  I could not be happier.  It's absolutely wonderful.

We worked together to finish putting up the bricks on Sunday.  Bryan used dowels for spacers to make sure we had a good distance between each brick.  We again had to fight our non-square house by splitting the differences between the counter tops and the walls to make it LOOK like everything was lined up.  Levels don't do a whole lot of good around here except to tell you just how off things are :).

Let's talk a little bit about tile saws - wet saws.  They are MESSY.  They leave you covered in cakey dirt and apparently make your left shoulder wet and your hair feel like a brillo pad.  I was in charge of making the cuts on Sunday afternoon and, well, a picture says a thousand words!

After letting them set up for a couple of days, it was time for mortar.  This stuff is a little tricky - especially when you're using it on a porous surface like brick.  Any that gets where you don't want it and dries is basically there for good, so you have to be a stickler for wiping messes up as they happen or you're stuck forever!

So, it still lacks the electrical outlet plates, but otherwise, it's DONE!  Love love love it.  Love my fantastic husband for entertaining my crazy ideas.  It turned out perfectly!