Is this possible in a beautiful way? My new self-adhesive wall tiles
I'm going to take you on a little journey through time! We're going back to October 31, 2017, the day I was handed over the keys to my new apartment! Everything went perfectly smoothly until the moment when my landlord proudly told me in the kitchen how he had installed the splashback in the kitchen. I think the way he told it was meant to make it very clear to me how beautiful he thinks it is. Please don't get me wrong! Lots of people would probably be happy with a mint green glass top and would prefer it to many other things. Unfortunately, my dear landlord couldn't have known that he had rented the apartment to an interior blogger who was already thinking about how to make the mint green disappear.
Unfortunately, taking it down wasn't an option, as I would have problems when I moved out. So my first thought was to stick a black film over it, which could also withstand the heat from cooking. I don't know exactly what the main reason was, but something stopped me from actually putting the film up. I think I always secretly thought that it would look far too cheap. I then focused on other things in the apartment, as I hadn't had the decisive idea for the kitchen until recently!
I have always been a big fan of tiles in the kitchen and when my dear Steffi created her dream kitchen in her new apartment, including these tiles, I knew: I want that too! OK, Steffi's kitchen is of course much nicer than mine and her tiles are real, but I have to manage it in a modified form. There must be tiles that you can stick on...
"White tiles to stick on for a Scandinavian kitchen" - that was more or less what I searched for on Google. We can say that I'm good at search engines. I landed directly on Wayfair's website and found exactly the tiles I wanted! After a quick comparison with other websites, they ended up in my shopping cart. Or, to be more precise, five of them ended up in my shopping cart. Because if we can say one thing: it feels impossible to work out from the product description how many you get when you click on the smallest quantity of five. Do five pieces mean five individual tiles or are they several together? Hey, I'm not lying, I was wondering if you can really be so blonde. Since even five pieces cost €45, I only ordered the smallest quantity to really see whether they were worth the money or whether they looked completely cheap. And as I said: I couldn't even estimate how many you would actually get sent!
But I can answer that question for you now! Five pieces mean five times this:
This meant that I was able to work out that I needed a total of 32 for the small area around my stove. Ouch! Especially ouch because you can only order them in packs of 5, so I had to order a total of 35. Ouch ouch ouch! Yup, you've calculated correctly that the whole thing cost around €315 in total (just for one wall!). And yeah, that's a lot of money that you could/would rather spend on something else. I have a slightly different opinion, though. My thinking was more that I know I want to live in the apartment for a few more years and can either get annoyed about this wall a lot, or just do something about it. It's a long-term investment, after all.
"Sarah, why don't you just use real tiles? For that price you can easily get real tiles and a tradesman to put them up for you!" Yes, that's a completely valid objection, but then I come back to the point with my landlord, who was very proud of his mint green glass top and I didn't dare change anything about it. In short: for me the tiles were the best option and I was happy that such a thing even existed.
But how do you actually attach the self-adhesive tiles? Well, the name says it all: they are self-adhesive. OK, sorry, but that had to be said, haha. As you have already seen above, the tiles have a certain shape that doesn't fit into every corner and sometimes needs to be cut to size. It's really easy! At first I did it with scissors, only to find out how easy it would have been with a knife. Well, you're always wiser in the end! My tip is to find someone to help you stick them on. Four hands just make it straighter.
At first I thought that you would be able to stick it on pretty quickly. But that was a mistake! Cutting it takes a bit of time, so in the end it took me around 2.5 hours to do the whole wall. But that could also have been because I kept chatting to my neighbors, who helped me.
What happens if I stick a tile on crookedly? Nothing, just peel it off and correct it! Last but not least, there is the question that most people were most interested in, apart from how expensive it is: will I be able to get it all off again at some point, is it heat-resistant and can the tiles also be used in the bathroom? These are of course all questions that I cannot answer at the moment, as I have only just got them. According to the product description, all of the answers were yes. But feel free to hop over here to find out more: https://www.wayfair.de/baumarkt/pdp/smart-tiles-102-cm-x-51-cm-mosaikfliesen-set-selbstklebend-metro-kart1055.html
It also says that they won't yellow or crack. I'll definitely report back! What we can say is that I'm really happy! My kitchen looks so much nicer and I enjoy it every day! Sure, it's not a small amount of money, but for me it was totally worth it!
