Sorry, this is a little long, but I felt like I needed to give some background.

We're in the midst of what hubby and I are calling our "7 year kitchen" remodel. We're doing what we can to make it a more functional and beautiful space, but trying not to spend so much money that it's cost-prohibitive... and it's a delicate balance. In seven years or so, we plan on totally gutting the whole kitchen, taking it down to the studs and essentially starting from scratch. But, we're probably going to have a child in 2-3 years, and I wanted a kitchen that was functional now. I know how "life happens" sometimes and I didn't want to not do ANYTHING to the kitchen and then have a baby come along and be stuck with an ugly, dysfunctional space. Not sure if that makes sense to others, but it makes sense to us.

This was our kitchen when we started:

This is our kitchen in progress:

Please ignore the changed color of the countertops. I had followed a blog's instructions and painted them. They look fine, but I realized after that the biggest problem is an overall lack of functional counter space.

Our contractor is going to be coming tomorrow to install a dishwasher, two new base cabinets, and new countertops. Last night, we were doing some of the demo work (he said if we could save him time by doing the demo, it would save us money). We had this weird spice shelf over our stove that needed to come down. So, last night I very carefully pried it apart, piece by piece, and removed it from the wall. We have some aluminum or tin tile, probably original to the house (painted over many times), and it's falling apart behind the stove. But it's in great shape everywhere else!

Anyways, when I took down the spice shelf, four tiles came off the wall. I wasn't surprised. The adhesive is literally crumbling behind them. I dabbed a little liquid nails on the back of them and secured them as best as I could. But hubby and I both agree that the best plan is to probably put something cheap and more durable over it. These aren't the first tiles to come down in that area, and some of the other tiles that are up have been damaged over time.

This is the area around the stove, before any demo:

We're getting a blind cab installed to the right of the stove, and another base cab to the left of the stove (we're taking out the bottom portion of the shallow, somewhat dysfunctional pantry).

Here's the countertops we're going to be getting in:

What I was thinking for the backsplash is this faux tin tile stuff from HD or Lowe's:

But here's my dilemma... we have the plain tile halfway up the wall throughout the entire kitchen.

Is it going to look stupid to have an ornate tin tile as the backsplash, and then plain tile running up the walls everywhere else? The plain tile needs to be painted anyway... should I paint it something similar to the backsplash color, or should I paint it something that contrasts with it? I had been thinking of painting it a very light, warm gray (to pick up some of the gray in the countertops and flooring we're putting in), but I don't know if the gray will fight with the silver of the backsplash.

Thoughts?