Plan B Forum

My wife uses HGTV channel for her default when nothing else is on she really likes. I just stepped away from one of their series on builder/designer teams that seem to do renovations all over town. This one (I think) is called "Home Town" I like his shop with the sign 'Measure once and cuss twice' She just installed the 'back splash' in the kitchen. It is very old brick, sliced down for an antique brick look veneer. This was desirable for the many voids in the brick--a texture like a well used old sponge--random holes of uneven size and shape.

What is the function of a 'back splash'? Any surface in my kitchen that is not cleaned frequently develops a greasy film that takes real scrubbing to remove. This one seems to me to defy the dictum 'form follows function' to be a @##$%^&* and finger nail buster to try to clean.

snailgate.

I love a backsplash in a kitchen precisely because it’s usually made of some substrate that is much easier to clean than painted wall, so it holds up to frequent - daily - scrubbing and de-greasing. Even a good quality semigloss or gloss paint starts to degrade with frequent scrubbing.

I’ve never seen a brick backsplash, but in my law school row house apartment I had a brick wall in the kitchen that required frequent cleaning, being near a cooking surface - it held up well to the scrub brush designated for the purpose.

Just like granite or marble coutnertops, I would think such a backsplash would have to be sealed to function properly as a backsplash. I googled it and there are many sealants (many are polyurethan based) that you could use.