How one couple saved $8,000 on a marble kitchen backsplash

Anyone who has renovated a property will tell you that you should add 30 percent of the total cost to your budget. Line item? An unexpected event. Usually it's an unexpected leak, a finicky heat pump, or a crack in the foundation. But for photographer and director Harper Smith and her husband Cameron Duddy, bassist for the band Midland, it amounted to an entire kitchen makeover. While renovating the Dripping Springs, Texas, home they had owned for nearly a decade, they discovered that the exterior walls were poorly constructed. Everything would need to be demolished, including the walls supporting the kitchen cabinets. “We ended up having to remove the kitchen against our wishes,” Smith says. Silver lining: The drab brown space had “zero cuteness,” so at least we could justify the reno from a style standpoint.

Soon, a couple. Designer Amy Pigliacampo. Then the contractor, Strong Roots Development, started thinking of a clever way to make the surprise project cheaper. One of his solutions was to forego using a “terrible full slab” of Calacatta Viola marble for the backsplash. “I was able to find some affordable slabs, but the pieces were either too small or didn't have the beautiful purple hue,” Smith recalls. Most estimates were in the range of $9,000 to $10,000. “So we either had to spend a lot of money on slate that didn't match the color, or we had to find another option.” That alternative was tile.

After a little research, I came across Artistic Tile's 18 x 18 inch polished marble tile. Compared to other Calacatta Viola tiles Ms. Smith sampled, these were the only ones within her budget that didn't have a glossy printed look. Smith estimates that after materials and labor, the backsplash cost him just $1,800. “Plus, this company was great to work with. When a couple broke up, they sent me a new one right away,” she says. (Editor's note: At the moment, the brand only carries 24 x 24 and 12 x 24 options. )

The only real instruction Smith and Pigliacampo gave the tile installers was to group the pieces with the most dramatic stripes above the stovetop. Their logic: The first thing you see when you come down the stairs in the morning are these six tiles.

This clever pretense wasn't just applied to the kitchen. The couple's shower is clad in his large 12-by-24-inch black terrazzo tiles from Direct Stone Source, but the pattern is so dense that the dark grout blends in tightly, making the hack even less obvious. yeah. “It looks seamless,” he says. Smith.

As for the floor tiles, they were all made by Smith and Duddy in their mother's pottery studio after deciding they couldn't afford Cle Tile's Fornace Brioni collection. “I had a kiln and a husband who helped me in any way he could,” Smith says. The only thing better than saving him $8,000 in materials is to make it himself.