Yeah, don't do it. Aside from the fact that I'm not a fan of the "line," you have very little choice but to take out a whole row of subways and replace it with the same thickness of glass mosaic. It's not a ribbon of color so much as a dated, "in your face" imposition of 00's style. And the rows of tile above and below the "line" will be symmetrical in layout. It's going to look odd.

From a more practical point of view, you must buy a diamond blade to cut glass tile, and they're expensive, and your grout will have to be unsanded - may not be the same as the grout you have on the rest of your tile. And what do you do if you damage existing tile that you didn't mean to replace?

One last consideration: you can add color to a kitchen using accessories. It's much less expensive than changing your tile, and you can change your colors any time, every week if you want to.

Do whatever makes your hearts sing, but from my experience, my best advice is, if the bs you have is quality tile you don't hate that has been installed properly, leave it alone. If you dislike the bs, pull it all out, replace or repair the drywall, and put up a bs that you love from scratch, the right way. Good luck!

I just took out a backsplash with an accent row and replaced it with white subway, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask. But I wonder if it is colour that you want or glass tile that you want? I agree with others that replacing the tile with something else is going to be difficult and disappointing. If you must have a row of colour, can you paint a row of tile?

Young House Love did that:

http://www.younghouselove.com/2012/06/room-border/

I have no idea if their method was the best one, but it seemed easy for them and looked good in the end.

I would think it would be tricky to get the tile and grout out without chipping the remaining tiles. Even if you could do it without damaging the tiles, I'm not sure it would look like it belongs there. I'd leave it as is, white subways are a nice, classic look. If you think the kitchen needs color, there are always small appliances, window treatments, etc that will give you the pops of color you think the kitchen needs.

You're not crazy, but your wife is getting way ahead of herself. White subway is still very much in style, so it wouldn't be like your kitchen is outdated. Further, you should live with it after moving in to see how and if it grows on you.

You might still want to alter the backsplash in some way later, but cross that bridge then. Don't make it a factor in your decision now.

First ... buy the house.

then come talk to us, with pictures.

It actually depends most on how the tile was installed in the first place. If it's easy to remove it's an easy job although there is an issue with the symmetry above and below as noted above. If the tile was sunk into concrete.... Maybe you could tell by looking at it how it was installed but probably you can't. So what does that mean for you?

If you start breaking the tiles and then realize after breaking one out that it will be an enormous, awful, horrendous job... Or worse yet you realize that you may be unable to control the demolition process well enough to remove exactly one row. But with one broken tile what are your options?

• Leave the broken one broken-that will probably look awful.
• Continue and accept that it is a really frustrating job to complete.
• Realize that because of the way it was installed, the only way it's coming out is if you take out the entire backsplash.

Before you start any demolition, mock up the tile that you are thinking of installing on a board first and see how the fixative shows through the tile (a common complaint of people who installed the glass tile is they hate how it looks when it's attached to the wall) and whether or not you can match the existing grout color.

Be sure to calculate the cost of redoing the entire backsplash if you elect to proceed, you may not end up having to redo everything but you should financially be in a position to do so should the need arise.

Are you aware that they actually sell stickers that go sit on the top of tiles just for this purpose? You might be much better off looking into an alternative instead of undertaking a job of unknown complexity.

(My tile was sunk in cement. At one point that method of installation was a common building practice; they made things to last forever. To remove it, significant pieces of the wall came out in addition to the backsplash.)

I personally don't like the idea of one line running around the entire kitchen. I really preferred the original tile in the Young House love sample above. The same visual line could be accomplished by adding a small layer of contrasting trim to the bottom of the cabinets... I think that you will realize that it wouldn't look that nice... I don't think the line of tile would look that nice either.

I had wanted to add a line of color in the tiles surrounding my tub. They were white, with a very pale blue speckle. I thought some kind of blue glass mosaics would update the bathroom without a full tear out. My husband talked me out of it, he said that it was likely when we were removing the tiles, some next to the ones we were removing would get chipped. And since we needed to regrout anyway, why not just tear it all out and start fresh? Thus began our full bathroom remodel. Change the tile around the tub, it makes the floor tile look old, change the floor tile, the cabinets look worn, before you know it.....a brand new bathroom! No regrets, I love my new bathroom but the lesson here is that sometimes a small update can morph into a big one.