Leo sat on his kitchen floor, staring at the small, bare patch of drywall that would now forever be a slightly different shade of green—a permanent monument to the .
The first time Leo stood in his kitchen with a tape measure, he felt like a math genius. His backsplash area was a simple rectangle behind the stove and a long strip under the cabinets.
The clerk, an older woman named Martha who had seen a thousand "Leos" in her time, peered over her glasses. "You’re going to want at least 10% more than that, sugar. Call it sixteen square feet."
He headed to the tile shop and picked out a beautiful, deep-emerald subway tile. He asked the clerk for exactly fourteen square feet.
"Height times width," he muttered, scribbling on a napkin. "Fourteen square feet. Easy."
Then came the "herringbone catastrophe." Leo had decided to tilt the tiles for a focal point behind the stove. Every tile at the edge needed a complex 45-degree cut. By the time he reached the final corner of the kitchen, he reached into the box and felt nothing but cardboard. He was three tiles short.
By Saturday afternoon, the kitchen smelled of mastic and ambition. The first few rows went perfectly. But then he hit the electrical outlets. On his first attempt to trim a tile to fit around a socket, the ceramic snapped like a cracker. One gone. On his second try, his wet saw slipped, nibbling too far into the corner. Two gone.
Leo chuckled. "I’m a precise cutter, Martha. I don’t plan on breaking anything." He bought the fourteen and left.
