What the...

So we're getting ready to take down that old backsplash and put up the new one.  Fingers crossed, we'll be starting that project this weekend.  But we've come to a little dilemma.  What do we do for trim?

We wanted to frame the tile in a nice pencil tile.  We planned on going around the whole backsplash.  We've been looking for a nice trim tile and we went into it knowing it was going to be expensive, but we had no idea.

We head to Menards and couldn't find anything we liked. Okay, on to the next store.

So we headed up to Home Depot too see what they had.  We figured we would hit up the hardware stores before going to the tile store.  This was our plan to save money. 

And to our surprise we found two pencil tiles we liked and thought would look good with the tile we picked.

One was a cream travertine (limestone) tile.  We liked the color, we like the texture; we thought it would be a contender.  It was $6 a 2x12 tile, but we told ourselves that we wouldn't really need all that many, so it was okay that it was a little pricy.  So we grabbed a sample and kept looking.  I mean you don't want to buy something without looking at all your options, tile is pretty permanent (well, it's a pain to change out). 

So then we found a slate pencil tile.  Ohhh, slate, I love slate.  And we really liked all the different colors in this one.  It had a crazy combination of greys, blacks, and browns.  It would be perfect with the tile we picked out.

Okay, so we grabbed one of those as well.  This one was also $6 for a 2x12 tile.  But again, we figured it would be expensive, but how many of these would we need anyway?  It couldn't be a lot.

Home again, home again we headed with our two new tile samples in hand.  We held the tile up on the wall and put each sample up against the wall as well as the counter to see which one would look the nicest.

It was a pretty hard choice because they both looked really nice up there. But after much discussion, we decided we liked the darker tile and would go with that.  We measured again to make sure we would order enough, sat down and opened the internets to place an order, entered the amount we needed, hit the button that calculates your total, and almost had a heart attack.  I had already had a bad feeling that this was going to be too pricey, but you just don't believe it until you see it.  Our total came to over $300 for TRIM.  That is seriously more then we paid for the tile (we got the tile during an awesome sale).  We can't afford that.  And it doesn't matter, I'm not paying that.

So I tried searching the internet for cheaper tile without any luck.  That's how they get you.  Oh you need trim?  Of course you need trim, well here it is, twice the price of a full tile sheet.  WHAT?

Now we're trying to decide what we want to do about trim.  We have to have some sort of trim on the one wall that opens up into the dining room, so we have to find something.  We've discussed wood trim that matches the rest of the trim.  We've looked at the PVC or metal trims.  All I know is we better decide soon because we're running out of time.

Do any of you have any suggestions for a more affordable tile trim?

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