thanks for your thoughts and suggestions! I like the texture idea, especially the first two examples sweeby posted, though the practical me is looking at it and imagining all the random splatters of hot oil slowly accumulating in all crevices and thinking how in the world do you keep it clean??? the dark herringbone is nice too, the blue one ... I wouldn't risk putting something so strongly appealing to certain taste only. I thought the diagonal tile would add more interest but berryberry's horizontal layout is really appealing too. what tile is it? I am somehow hesitant about adding lines and lines of grout to maintain but maybe it's not such a big deal as I think it is. my budget on this is limited, so glass tile is out. some are nice but cost precludes them. overall, not really my style anyway so I'm not too sad. my first picks were all in the reddish terra cota family, the second try I did try to stay in neutral, but you are right, nothing really looks good. gosh ... search continues ...

Ashe 42, I love charcoal slate and these tiles are great. They are rectangular with variation in size of the rectangles, so sort of a more linear look than a lot of traditional square slate tiles. The tile is from Earthstone Gallery in Reno, NV but I don't actually know the brand (ordered them directly from the showroom based on the display). I now have 24 square feet of gently used tile, but it wasn't inexpensive - upward of $20/sq ft as I recall. Argh. Linelle, thanks for the words of support - greatly appreciated! Unfortunately there is some tangential family connection and it is a small community. I don't think they're bad people, it's just not a business model that lends itself to good customer service (we have to fight with them to get itemized cost lists, like for plumbing fixtures, and then consistently find errors - all of which labels us "bad clients"). This crew does good work, so I'm a lot better off than other stories I've heard in that I feel the house will hold up! All the subs live in fear of this builder and their designers, who will cut them off at the drop of a hat if they talk to their clients out of turn, etc. But that is the business model - controlling the clients to get them to agree to what is profitable, and controlling the subs to get them to do what they want, is the bottom line for the relatively low price/sq ft in a more assembly line "semi-custom home" approach. I do feel ambivalent about having made this choice, and honestly had no idea what I was getting into; nonetheless, it was our choice. The good news is that I really like the foreman and many of the subs, so the people who are actually doing the work are great (vs the owners, managers and avaricious designers).

I am having the hardest time choosing a backsplash. I am looking for the exact style you have. I have New Venetian Gold, and first took home samples of Ivory tumbled stone, but for some reason, it looks like a pinkish tone in my kitchen with that granite. I think I need a little goldish tone with cream for a better combination with my granite, also what makes it hard is that my cabinets are ivory. I could not find any tumbles stone with a gold tone but I did see porclein tile, that looks like stone, with a goldish cream color. I think I am going to get that. It is sort of a mono-tone effect, but soft. I will put somekind of design throughout the pattern or little mosaic tile. Susan-What color is your stone, it goes beautiful with you cabinets. Coocombs-what color is your stone. The venetian gold is a goldish brown color and your colors look too peachy or busy for my counter.

So tired of hearing " but that will make it look dated" or "it wouldn't be good for resale" Everything is going to be dated at some point, the kitchen designers, cabinet companies and appliance companies make sure of that. Example: stainless steel appliances were just coming on the market 15 years ago when we gutted our kitchen for a remodel. It was hard for me to find stainless in my area at that time, I live in a small mid western town. So, have you noticed in the past few years appliance companies have been trying to bring out new colors, grayed looking stainless, now ice white etc. they are trying to make people think their stainless appliances are soon going to be "dated". But I have read in several articles that stainless is still the number one choice. I chose a cinnamon stained cherry wood for our new build. I thought about white because that is the trend right now, but I reasoned cherry cabinets will always be in style while the white trend Has just a few more years. I won't be a slave to trends. Just my opinion.