We dove into this backsplash project with a mix of excitement and nervousness — mostly excitement. It took longer than we expected: nearly three hours just to figure out how to cut the tiles, prep the workspace, and mix thinset before installing a single piece. By the end of the day, after Clara went to bed, we had this much completed:
It’s a promising start. I keep catching myself admiring the tiles and feeling oddly proud. There’s a lot to share about the process, but for now we’ll focus on the cutting method that worked best for us and why. We still have the rest of this wall and the entire oven wall — all the way to the ceiling — to finish, so we’re learning and refining as we go.
Our first attempt used tile nippers we bought at Home Depot. They performed well on a test sheet we brought to the store, but once we started cutting the real penny tile sheets at home, the results weren’t great when trying to cut individual tiles in half:
Many tiles cracked or ended up uneven — clearly not ideal.
Next we tried a wet saw. John usually likes the wet saw, but it didn’t play well with our penny tile sheets because the mesh backing that holds the pennies together soaked up water and started to fall apart, even when we used very little water. Others have reported success with a wet saw, so your results may vary depending on the mesh and tile type.
Since the wet saw damaged the mesh, we returned to the nippers and refined our technique. After some trial and error we developed a reliable approach for our particular penny tile (thickness and mesh type can change results for other tiles):
For those who can’t watch the video, here are the key points:
- Place a strip of blue painter’s tape along the cut line. The tape helps mark the line and seems to reduce cracking when snipping.
- Center the nippers on the tile as much as possible. Positioning too close to an edge increases the chance the tile will shatter.
- Squeeze the nippers gently at first — like flexing your hand a few times — then apply progressively more pressure until the tile breaks. This technique appears to score the surface and yields a cleaner break.
- The method isn’t flawless, but it produced far better results than our other attempts.
- If a tile shatters, remove it from the mesh and replace it with an intact tile — a process we called back-filling. Once you apply thinset, you can press replacement tiles into the gaps. Keep an eye on spacing so tiles aren’t too close or too far from each other; step back periodically to check alignment.
- Thinset remains workable for about 30 minutes, which gives you time to make small adjustments before it begins to harden and lock everything in place.
- From start to the point shown in these photos took about two hours of installation work, after roughly three hours spent refining our cutting technique, pre-cutting sheets for this section, and prepping the workspace.
That’s what we’ve learned so far. Next time we’ll share step-by-step images of spreading thinset and fitting tiles together in a staggered pattern to avoid visible seams — we wanted to be sure our method was reliable before pausing to photograph the process. We’ll continue documenting the project with more photos and videos in real time as we move around the room. Fingers crossed the big wall of tile over the stove won’t be too daunting.
Psst — we also tackled tiling in our first house’s bathroom; check out that earlier project for more tiling adventures.