Ugly tiles - what are my options?

[Heybugee]

Our kitchen is very old and has ugly tiles, pretty much full height all the way around. We will replace the kitchen at some point but likely to be a few years before we can afford that so I’d thought about painting the tiles to make it feel a little better in the interim.

This morning I was looking at the kitchen bench/seat wondering what quick fix I can do to make that look a bit better and it occurred to me there might be other options for the tiles.

Any recommendations from personal experience as to what works best to hide horrible tiles? Or is painting them the best option?

I used stick on tiles in my kitchen to cover some awful textured tiles. They’re far from perfect but you can’t tell unless you stand and stare at them 😅
Just make sure to read the dimensions as they were smaller than I expected but it worked out in the end. They’ve been up probably about 5 years and I’ve only had to replace one maybe two..

I saw someone on TikTok cover theirs with tongue and groove mdf panels that they painted. If I was better at diy I’d do that to mine because it looked great.

I’ve recently painted ours with tile paint. It looks fab. We were considering retiling but we liked the size of the tiles and didn’t want patterned ones. Also painted the grout and you wouldn’t know they were painted!

@Confusedmermaid1 that’s good to know. I’d had a little look at them but was dubious of they would stop well and survive. 5 years says yes.

@IdLikeMyMomentInTheSunshine intersting. Did they glue them on?

@Pamcakey the grout was putting me off the paint idea. I thought it would look a bit naff so good to know it might not (depending on my skills)

Tile decals are like stickers and work well. You just peel and stick. Another option is to paint over them.

Tiling with normal glazed tiles is a pretty easy beginners DIY job. Even if you are slow, you could remove all the tiles and replace them over a weekend. And if you don't feel confident then a tiler could do it in a day for you. I wouldn't have though it would be more than a hundred quid of you do it yourself or a 500 if you get someone in (unless you are in London or the se which may be pricier).

The only tricky bit is tiling round sockets. Are there many sockets to deal with?

I won't be retiling until we're ready to re-do the whole kitchen. Basic metro tiles plus adhesives, etc for the area would come at around £200 alone. I wouldn't even consider attempting to tile that area ourselves (a much smaller area as a first attempt, maybe) so would have to pay a tiler. I'm really keen to use this house as a way of learning more useful skills, but with work and children I don't have time to try and do that with the kitchen unfortunately.

The house has great bones but is going to be a money pit with the renovations required (we were of course aware of that before buying) so I need to try and do temporary fixes such as this on a tight budget.

If you want to gradually learn useful skills to add value rather than just find a cheap fix I suggest you remove the tiles, learn to replaster ( not as difficult as it is made out to be) and repaint .Your walls would look so much better and will be ready for whatever next step you choose to do later.

Whenever you decide to remove the tiles, I'd suggest a bent tile remover/scraper for their removal rather than the usual hammer and bolster, as the latter is pretty certain to leave you with a re plastering job, and why make more work for yourself? I used one in our bathroom to firstly (with a hammer, but carefully!) get the tiles off, and then in conjunction with a steamer to remove the adhesive residue on the walls. It took ages, but it left the wall in such a good state that I was able to paint/wallpaper straight over it with no other work other than very minor filling, cleaning and priming, as in no plastering required.
If you want to use wallpaper in a bathroom or kitchen you can make it harder wearing/waterproof by using decorators glaze over it.

@Heybugee you can get grout ‘pens’, it was dead easy!

Ikea sells panels that cover the area between the counter and the cupboards above. They’re waterproof and hygienic but you’d still have ugly tiles in the rest of the room. And you’d have to cut holes for power outlets etc.