Hi there, I came back to update this topic. No, there is no way it was mildew. The apartment was extremely dry, actually, during the winter months, and the discoloration went all the way through the grout. The Starquartz company has been a nightmare to deal with. They sent a nice representative out about a week after I posted, who immediately promised to send me new grout and $500 credit for my contractor. Well, guess what? I emailed and called for 5 months (!) and nothing ever happened. It was an empty promise. Finally, I found out from my contractor that another person had the same problem, so we spoke, and found out that others also had this issue. It was DEFINITELY a quality control issue on the part of Starquartz company, as there were several of us affected by the "bad batch" as a rep referred to it. The long and short of it is that the tile store that my contractor bought the Starglass grout from (Artistic Tile in NYC - good place!) issued me the $500 rebate and charged it back to the company, and then they forced Starquartz to send us the promised 3 buckets of diamond white starglass grout. The only problem was, after 4.5 months of waiting and calling, we HAD to get that bathroom done so by the time they sent the 3 replacement buckets in late June/early July, totally out of the blue as Starquartz had not contacted us about it, ever, we had regrouted about 3 weeks earlier with regular cement grout. (The contractor had dug out the bad grout many months before in anticipation of receiving the promised replacement, so the bathroom couldn't be used for all those months.) Caveat Emptor!

Google "back painted glass" and your city and you should get some options. At least where I am (DC metro area) the prices varied wildly. All of my outlets are under cabinet, but i understand the glass folks simply cut out the outlets and polish the edges, just as the edges at the end of a counter run are polished to a smooth finish. My glass has little tiny notches cut out for the wire for the under cab plugs. Best of luck.

So has anyone seen pictures of alternatives besides a entire row of an accent tile? We have a 15 foot run that is very horizontal in nature, and I'm not that fond of having yet another horizontal line. But I REALLY would like an accent of some sort besides what is going over the stovetop in the middle. I was at the tile store today, and 1 of the employees suggested randomly dropping a skinny row of mosiac between the subway tiles. We were looking at a noce 3x6, plus a polished scabos (matches granite well, and I don't like glass) mosiac. Interjecting the mosiac seems to really go against the spirit of doing a subway, but it could give an accent. So is this mission impossible, and I should look at a more conventional tile pattern? Any other ideas?

Several threads, including on using digitally backprinted glass for a backsplash here on GW. Try to find a commercial glass store or see if you can get tempered glass that can be printed or painted. I'm outside DC and would have been able to find relatively inexpensive suppliers/print shops to pursue this. Bunch of threads. http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2666862/glass-back-splash-is-up-progress-photo http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2426187/back-painted-glass-backsplash http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2698456/backpainted-glass-backsplash http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2449038/digital-printing-on-glass-as-backsplash