nik, Welcome! A couple of thoughts: if you love absolute black but are worried about maintenance, look at a leathered finish. It is much more forgiving than the polished finish to smudges, etc. There might be a reason you aren't seeing a lot of pictures with your color cabs and white tile - you might be right and it might be too bright. Try to get some sample tiles and bring them home and tape them to the wall to get an idea. You might find the answer really fast! Check the Finished Kitchen blog and Backsplash slideshow (link to FKB below, backsplash slideshow at FKB) for more pics to see if anyone else has done it - there are lots of successful rule breakers here! Maybe consider an off-white subway. Again checking a sample in your kitchen with your cabs and counter will help. If you both love the glass mosaic you might be able to incorporate it in a small area - like behind the backsplash or as an accent with 2 or 3 rows of mosaic between rows of subway - there are some examples in the finished backsplashes. Finally, congrats on making it this far! Here is a link that might be useful: Finished Kitchens

Thanks so much CKGM for getting back to us with the photos of your beautiful tiles. (I was on vacation recently and am now just getting a chance to check back.)Your granite is even more like mine than I first thought! (Though my rusty streaks are a bit paler). Your tile is gorgeous and so unique that it might not go out of style as quickly as some other type of tile that "everyone" is doing at the moment probably would, IMHO. I went to a local Grazia dealer and they said that they don't have butter blend, or anything from that line,in stock anywhere around here on the mid-atlantic coast! They said, since it has to come from Italy, it could take months just to get a sample in! Where did you get yours from, if I might ask? I wonder if they would ship? Please post pics when you get your new grout stained! I think it looks fine now, but I know that in real life, things can look different.

oohh, I love your kitchens! Thank you for sharing:) Remodelfa, the samples I carried home were all tumbled cream stone with pink undertones...I realized after looking here that that's probably contributing to the problem: the shiny dark granite is not working with the tumbled stone. I think I need to look at the polished tiles, or the crackled tiles. Lissa's kitchen is beautiful; her colours are very similar to mine. LOL, Rhome - when I was envisioning my kitchen last winter, I always thought of baked goodies when I thought of the colours:cream with chocolate frosting, chocolate with vanilla frosting (for the island)! Weedyacres - couldn't find "matte" subway tiles like yours but this is what I initially had in mind. Jeannie kitchen - beautiful insert tile (and I'm loving your stove) Thank you to everyone who kindly responded:)

All of these kitchens are amazing.. Yes now to enhance or not to enhance. It's so hard to make all of these choices! And before my hubbie was going to install but now I think I'm hiring a tile guy to save time (not money) but I picked a complicated design to do so I think my hubbie is a little thankful.. Does $10-$12 for labor per sq foot seem normal for tile setting a backsplash, not including materials.