At the beginning of the year I created a projects list for the house. On that list was installing peel and stick tiles on the kitchen backsplash.
I had seen pictures of others using Tic Tac Tiles and thought they looked pretty good. Since I wasn’t sure what backsplash I wanted as a permanent solution, I thought giving these peel and stick tiles was worth a shot.
Here’s how it panned out.
Installing Tic Tac Tiles
When I ordered the Tic Tac Tiles I had pretty low expectations. I mean, would a peel and stick tile really look good? To my surprise – yes!
When I received the tiles, I was pretty impressed with them. They had a real tile look to them.
I thought installing these would be easy, but I was wrong!
I started by creating a level line on my wall as a guide. I decided to start at one end of the counter and work my way to the other side. Lining up the grout lines was a bit tricky but I got the first half of my first wall done fairly easily.
Then it all went down hill…
Even though I used a level line to work off, my counter dipped down by the time I got to the other side. I ended up with nice, pretty, even tiles on the left side and by the time I got to the right side the bottom of the tile was a couple inches off the counter and it looked ridiculous.
I tried to correct this by shifting down the tiles and did eventually make it look right. The problem was that every time I had to reposition a tile it was less sticky.
I got this one wall looking good. I woke up the next morning to find that all of the tiles I had repositioned were now peeling off the wall! No matter what I did they would not stay put.
User Error?
I tried to move onto my next wall and encountered a similar problem. The wall bowed and every time I tried to reposition a tile it slowly started to peel off the wall.
(And these tiles ARE extremely sticky. I accidentally dropped one on the floor and it peeled the wood off my hardwoods!!)
In the end there were all kinds of spots that kept peeling up and I had to take them down.
They peeled right off with ripping up any paint or dry wall.
Final Verdict
For the right person these could work well. Just be warned that they are much harder to properly install than you think they would be. And are about impossible to cut with an exacto knife, instead you have to use scissors.
I’ve seen pictures of houses where these look fantastic. And the tiles themselves do look good.
If you have level counters and patience, then these could work for you.
In the end I decided to just go with real subway tile. I’ve got that installed and just need to grout then I’ll post some pictures of that!
Have you ever used peel and stick tiles? If so, how did it work out for you?
Leave a Reply