Either one. With subways you can usually get bullnosed tiles with either the long edge or the short edge rounded over for a "finished" edge. That way the field of subway tile looks the same all the way to the edge, but has a nice finished edge. That is what I did in my kitchen. The other thing you can do us use border pieces, like the quarter round you described, or other shapes that cordinate with your subway tile, to create a border all the way around the edges of the field (subway) tile. it depends on the look you want....

My knee wall issue is taken care of with mitered tiles on the outside portion butting up to mitered tiles on each side. (so it fits like a picture frame). I don't know why you couldn't do the same, and on every other row have a split tile with a center line (the stacked look). The miter is cut on site, and you need to use some very good grout to make those edges strong but the look is good. My tile is travertine on this wall, but I'm doing the same on the tub surround with my italian ceramic tile (didn't offer a bullnose edge) so I don't see that it would be a problem with your tiles...Bill or Mongo can beat me up for that statement if it's incorrect :) I'm just telling you what we're going to be doing with both ceramics and stone. (And it does look great!)

Blogger Thrifty Decor Chick's kitchen: I *think* this is pirula's kitchen (but if so I forgot to name it properly): The trim between the counter and backsplash here seems like it would help with the crumb problem deedles noted: This GWer's kitchen was featured on the show "I Hate My Kitchen", but I can't remember her name! Another GW kitchen with trim between beadboard and counter (WillTV, I believe): And so far as another alternative to tile, how about paint? Increase the pop of your wall color: I've heard of using glass panels with the back painted, too. The blog House on Ashwell Lane has some cool tile alternatives, including this stenciled backsplash and blackboard backsplash: Here is a link that might be useful: No Tile Backsplash Ideas from House on Ashwell Lane blog

We went to the ceiling. Measure and figure out the tile layout in advance to make sure you don't end up with small cuts. Don't rely on your tile guy to do it. Attached are pictures of our shower. The tile guy wanted to do two full tiles in the center of the back wall and then small cuts on the end. I pointed out that if you did one full in the center than the two on the end were practically full size. We also made sure to cut the ones for the shelf in such a way that the lines lined up with the back wall. The small cuts were down close to the floor and less noticeable than they would be on the top row. We also used floor tiles. I took them to a custom bullnose place. It was $100 to bullnose enough for the wall edges and the shelf. I liked that better than the plastic strips that are often used to edge the tile. I got redundant bullnose pieces for the unique pieces on the shelf and a couple more redundant pieces for the edges just in case of a bad cut. But the bullnose people messed up, not realizing these were redundant pieces and I had wrong bullnose edges for the redundant corner piece. Luckily that cut went well so I didn't have to go back and get another piece made. We also did full size tile at the edges of the sides and the cuts are toward the back wall. We used color matched silicone caulk in the corners and on edges of the shelf. White paintable caulk was used on the ceiling and adjacent to walls and white silicone caulk adjacent to tub. So three types of caulk used. There are small pieces at the base near the floor but you don't see them unless you are looking for them. He made all but one cut well. The bad cut (too wide) was on the shelf so I didn't spot it before it was put in. I checked on him periodically and the cuts were so precise that I wasn't checking after every cut after a while. The shelf was one of the last cuts. I had let my guard down by then so he did sneak one bad cut by me. The radius cuts around the tub were excellent. He did the cuts against the ceiling very nicely because of course everything wasn't square so although they are all flush with the ceiling they had to be custom measured with each cut to insure such a good looking clean line on the top. He washed the grout out with too much water when cleaning up, leaving the grout very white so I put a color enhancing seal on. The grout lines mostly disappeared with the enhancing seal but it left them shaded irregularly. It goes well enough with the tile so I didn't worry about it. Overall fairly pleased considering some of the jobs on here. His caulk lines are good but I insisted he use tape with the white caulk after seeing him not use tape with the color matched caulk. He did one very weird thing. He was worried the grout would stick to the bullnose edges so only grouted up to about an inch away from them. He was planning to caulk those edges in. The caulk was not that well color matched so I tested the grout on the bullnose edges and it did not stick so I had him go back with a second batch and grout in all the places he left empty. You can see in the pictures where one inch from all the edges is a slightly darker grout and sometimes not the same level. There wasn't much I could do about it after it was done other than have him fix it the way he did. Luckily it isn't that noticeable.