The last, biggest piece of our project left to do is the counter tops in the kitchen.  We long ago decided on granite for the counter tops mostly because the material is relatively inexpensive.  While the material isn’t expensive, the fabrication (cutting, shaping, polishing) is very expensive, like multiple thousands of dollars more expensive than the cost of the material.  So we decided to go with 24" by 24" granite tiles.  We figured we would be able to install them ourselves, if we were careful with the design.  For example, we designed the kitchen counters with angled corners instead of rounded edges, so that we could cut the tile ourselves.

On Saturday morning, I went down to the Oxnard Home Depot and rented an MK Diamond Pro24 Wet Tile Saw.  This saw looked great, but when we set it up, we discovered that it was pretty worn out.  The platen that the tile sets on had a lot of play from side to side and did not move to the blade very smoothly.  We struggled to make the saw work all day.  We made the last major cut at about 8:15pm.

We still have a couple of smaller cuts to make, but we were able to lay out all the surface tiles.

Poppa with his game face on.

The final layout

Hopefully, the backsplash tiles (12" ceramics) will be much easier to install.