FWIW, here are my tips for working travertine, which should also work for marble: to prevent cracking when you cut your tile, stick masking tape on the tile where you propose to cut it, mark your cut line, and cut the tile with the tape in place. Pull the tape off afterward. Also helps prevent cracking if you need to drill a tile. It's trading a lot of time to save some money, but if you have the time and need to save the money, you can do bevelling yourself: start with a belt sander and a rough grit sanding belt. Rough in the shape of your bevel. Follow the rough sanding with a medium grit belt, then move to an orbital sander with fine grit (180 or 220) and then a super-fine grit: 440 if you can find it, 320 if you can't. Finish by buffing/polishing with stone enhancer/sealer. For DIY bevelling on 3x6" tiles, I'd suggest you use a vise to hold the sanders in place upside-down. That way you can hold the tile to the sanding surface (much lighter) rather than the other way around. You can make an assembly-line type of operation out of it by roughing all your 3x6's in one pass, then the medium grit sanding, then the fine and so on. Do NOT try this with a hard stone like granite, however: you'll be there for months! Good luck!

Bill - can't a tile person do it this way? Can they be set almost touching, grouted WITHOUT filling the pits in the marble?? If the marble is sealed, how would it then be a breeding ground for bacteria? You CAN NOT set tumbled marble that close without culling through alot of stone to get the proper sized ones you want. I'm about to do a wall hanging project where I bought literally three times the entire square footage for just this reason-- to be able to cull through and get the stone I want for it. That's 45 square feet for a 15 square foot project at 7.00 a foot. Tumbled marble varies so much in size that to set it tight like that would end up in misalignment of the tiles pretty quickly, and then the whole thing would end up looking like hell. appears to be mostly contractor types with will intentioned advise but laced with poor opinions of kitchen designers. Actually I'M the one with a poor opinion of MOST kitchen designers. Many of them don't think things through. So long as they can create a piece of eye candy that THEY like, they're happy. Now, NOT ALL of them are like this. I know of several good KD's. But I've also heard more than my share of horror stories about them. I feel that contractors objectives on a backsplash job may be to get in and get out as quickly as possible, and to do at least a good enough to not get called back for rework. If you'd gone through my gallery AT ALL, you'd never make that statement. They may not want to do a project with grouted joints but leaving the aesthetically desirable voids of tumbled travertine/marble unfilled because it would be hard to do and take too long. That's simply ludicrous. If someone's willing to pay for my time, I'm willing to do what they ask, no matter HOW crazy I think it is, so long as it's not detrimental to the installation. There's a project I've posted many times here and at John Bridge's forum of a roman tub, deck, and circular floor that I did years ago-- total about 150 square feet, and it tooke me three work weeks to install because of the way the homeowner wanted it installed. So don't tell me I'm not willing to put in the time. Concerning some earlier questions, the tile are spaced at about 1/16" +/- You've got two courses of the same sized stone together. Try doing an entire backsplash with that small a joint!! and are set in white mastic. This one speaks for itself.

I was typing my response when the web-page crashed. I hate that ! Anyway - just wanted to say thanks to Roamer14 for those additional pictures. The tiles look great. Is that typhoon bordeaux granite by any chance ? It looks similar. I went to a tile store on saturday and they told me inserts could not be used with 3 x 6 arranged in a subway pattern. Obviously they were WRONG. I'm so glad I decided to post and ask this forum for advice and pictures. I'm FINALLY ready to order my backsplash tiles this week ! Hurrah ! Thanks for everyone's help.

nasalzak, The tiles you have should be mesh backed. You can "peel" individual tiles off and replace them with tiles of the same size. This can be done while still doing the install as a 12x12 sheet. I believe jodi in ca did this with her Jeffrey Court Fire and Ice backsplash. She took off some darker ones and added lighter glass tiles to brighten it up. Make sure the little tiles are the same size (they often say they are 1x1 but are actually 5/8 x5/8) and the same thickness (1/4 or 1/8). If you then wanted to get really creative you could insert/sprinkle some red glass in the copper, create a 3" or so wide strip of border, and continue with the copper above that. You wouldn't need that much redish glass tile depending on how much backsplash space you have. HOpe that helps a little.