Thanks guys. Here is some more info:
The tiles were flat and are held to the wall with 2 drywall anchors. I have metal studs in my house, so some of screws were just sheet metal screws where I hit a stud. I also used some ceramic tile caulk on the backs of tiles as I got higher on the wall - the caulk comes with the installation kit along with the drywall compound, a little plastic spatula to apply the compound with, sandpaper and drywall anchors - there is also a sealer that I did not use. The tiles come with a thin wood template. You are supposed to install the first tile, then mate the template up to it to mark the 2 holes, remove the template, drill the holes for the drywall anchors and then install the next tile. I found the template quite useless, so I mated up the next tile and tapped it in with a rubber mallet, marked the holes with an awl, then removed the tile, put in the drywall anchors, then set the tile back into its final place. I found this helped close the gaps as much as possible. In tapping and removing the tile, I did break off some of the locating tabs, but having the locating tabs or not did not affect the final project. You are supposed to end up with small gaps in between the tiles anyhow, then fill them with the drywall compound.
My wall was not 100% square or plumb, so after the first few tiles, things started to shift just a bit. The bottom row lifts off the baseboard from right to left about 1/4 inch. Also the final row on the left has a stepped finish you might be able to see in the pictures, this is due to each row being slightly tweaked to get the waves to line up. I thought it was much more important to have the waves line up vs having the tiles perfectly square to each other.
The tiles took a pretty hefty amount of abuse from the mallet whacking them into their final places, they are pretty rugged. However when it came time for the final top row, cutting them to size was a chore. We tried the Rotozip and the tile cracked. We tried a handheld grinder and the tile cracked. We ended up using the tile saw as I mentioned, and it was tedious and dicey! And, I only had one extra tile left, so that made it even more precarious! There is a bead of caulking between the top of the top tile and the MDF strip, so any imperfections from the cutting are pretty well hidden, plus its up about 8 feet, so you really can't see it anyway.
Filling and sanding... filling was not too bad. The instructions say to use the plastic spatula to apply the filler - my brother in law suggested making a piping bag using a ZipLoc plastic bag to fill the seams, that was awesome! I filled 3 or 4 tiles worth of seams, let it set up a bit, then removed the excess with the spatula. Sanding was not too bad - I bought some sanding sponges at HD and used them on the seams and curves. I also found I could remove some of the extra drywall compound but rubbing it with my fingers. I did 5 or 6 fill and sand sessions, and then I had had enough! It is not perfect but honestly you are not really supposed to look at it right up close. Once the paint was applied the seams disappeared and the finished wall looks awesome from about a foot away. I used wall texture from a spray can to make the edges blend in with the existing walls, you can see that in one of the pictures.
On to the LED lights - I bought these locally at a place called the LEDLIGHT, pretty sure they have a website! This is a flat tape with adhesive on the back. There is a transformer, control box and a handheld remote control. I have the transformer sitting with the TV components, and I ran a wire inside the wall to connect to the control box. The LEDs are red-blue-green and also put out a light blue, purple, yellow and an almost-white. Its pretty cool stuff! I put them into routered channels in the MDF strip on top. The next day they had fallen out, guess the adhesive is not that strong! So I put them up again with dabs of 5 min epoxy. Recently I found a color changing LED strip kit at Costco, same idea but shorter strips, and much less expensive. Its amazing what LED technology has brought us!
As I mentioned before, this project took me almost a year - one reason was I was not happy with the way the tiles had to be cut. On the bottom row about 4 tiles in, there was an electrical outlet. I cut a tile so-so around it and installed the tile, but was not really happy about the look. So I stepped away for a while and came back, ended up eliminating the outlet and putting a full tile there - problem solved. Between work and other stuff, time just passed, thankfully its only me and my dog who had to look at the half finished project for months, and he did not complain!
No I wouldn't hang any pictures on it! I had though about a small floating shelf in the middle, almost like a mantle I guess, just to put nick nacks but ended up scrapping that idea pretty early on.
Here's a few additional pictures. These show the locating tabs and slots in a couple of leftover cut pieces, and how the filling was done. Also the installation pattern, kind of like building blocks. If you have any questions or need more info... just let me know!
