I know many folks here post that they would opt out of tile.
I am amongst them. I hate grout. I haven't tried the new epoxy, but I would prefer laminate counters (which my old, old kitchen currently has, is almost 30 years old and JUST starting to show wear) than anything with a grout line.
Aside from the grout, you have to have a precision installer to ensure your counter will be even.
I vote anything but tile.

Humanity has come so close to abolishing grout :) With natural stone, manmade stone, laminates etc we have been able to make a smooth surface that is essential for a cooking surface (same goes for bathrooms). Next will be floors with virtually no grout (or very tight).

Although grout may look 'appropriate' for a period home but kitchens are about practicality first, aesthetic second.

Besides, appropriateness is overrated :) Quarter sawn oak cabinets will be a lot more appropriate, solid counters a lot more practical.

Tile has some advantages, with one MAJOR disadvantage:

Pros - relatively cheap, durable, heat resistant, scratch resistant (depending on tile chosen)

Cons - Grout.

You must know this already having grown up with it.
Lets take aesthetics out of the equation (as that is really subjective) and compare it to formica:
Cost wise it should be similar. Then it comes to a trade off - do you want something that is easy to clean, or do you want something that is heat/moisture resistant?

Having had both, I personally would prefer the tile over formica. The formica pealed around the DW and sink, and that one spot where I accidentally put down a hot pot.
In all fairness though, I dont do the cleaning, so my OB&C may have a different opinion.

Now, I would prefer granite over both, as it is heat resistant and easy to clean, but that comes at a little higher price.

As for solid counters like corian, I have and will always steer WAY clear of them. IMO they are expensive, and not durable enough to justify the cost (and frankly I dont like the way they look).

Just my $0.02

My current tile countertops are probably period-appropriate but are "ALWAYS icky and having grout problems." They have pushed me along the remodeling pathway harder than anything else in my ancient dysfunctional kitchen. They are a beautiful blue (2" tile) with a grey grout, but always look funky, even when I've just been cleaning. And after my family has been in there making sandwiches? Just close your eyes!

Thanks all---these pretty much confirm my fears! I think we will look elsewhere on the counter front--thanks!

I have tile kitchen counters now and I will never do it again. I don't like the grout. Maybe with the new epoxy grouts it would not be so bad.

The biggest concern I have for tile counters is not grout, but broken dishes and glasses. And it's not even the dollar cost of the broken stuff but the time and precision cleaning necessary to rid the kitchen of broken ceramic/glass/crystal. Glass shards fly- Many wet paper towels later, and lots of time later, you then have a kitchen fit for preparing/serving food. I never want to spend a half hour wiping up with wet paper towels, crawling around on every surface, floors, counters and whatever, making sure that every speck of broken glass is gone. So ok, maybe, you vac first. My comfort level is not good with vacs. I absolutely need to crawl everywhere, look at every surface from every angle, to make sure that no glass speckles lurk.

In our beach cottage, we have a lot of plastic tumblers, plates, serveware, not because I love it, but because it reduces the potential wasted time for cleaning broken ceramic/glass. We have acrylic as well as crystal and glass stemware. We have pretty stuff too, and if guests want to use it, great. Disposables work, too.

To me, tile almost guarantees broken pottery and it's just not worth it to me. In the beach cottage, where things are casual, so not necessary for me. All adults sure. But that's rare. I prefer drinking out of glass or crystal or ceramic but not at the potential of missing sand and sun to do stupid cleaning. I love tile and glass, but I love freedom from shard inspections more. So there.

Not grout, but broken stuff.

Grout sucks.

I have a lake cottage that I put in tile counters and it works really well. It was built just after the turn of the century and we wanted to preserve the original pump that is in the kitchen and tile allowed us to work around the pipe in the center of the counter!

We used regular style red and white square tiles (pillow edges) with a thin light grey, non-sand grout line. I don't have any problem at all keeping it clean. We spend about 6 weeks a year there and usually have, literally, a boat-load of company to cook for. We have too much fun to try to keep things clean so it's not babied at all.

If you were to use a square edged, rectified tile, the grout lines would be even more minimal, eliminating the biggest obstacle most people have to tile. A while ago someone posted a vintage kitchen they had restored and they did a black and white hex counter. It was really cool. I couldn't find the post - maybe someone else has it.

Have you looked at the Restoration Tile site? They do historical tile and they might be a good source for you. If you contacted them directly they could probably give you practical advice on counter installations. It would be a shame if you prematurely eliminated tile as an option since since your kitchen is such a great candidate for it.

Here is a link that might be useful: traditional hex tile

We are going to use large ceramic tile in our remodel with the epoxy grout. Should do quite well.

Even in our tiny kitchen, we don't have the option of laminate, due to the configuration. We'd have seams either in the corner where the sink is, or right in the middle of the stovetop or prep areas. We only talking about a 5 ft run one way and 9 1/2 the other.

Quote for silesstone was 4K for all the finished edges, cutouts, corners, and installation. Yikes!

Corian would scratch/burn too much for me.

Don't like granite.

We will do all the tilework for less than 500.00.

You should see Plllog's eeemazingly gorgeous tile counters before completely making up your mind ... :-)

The new epoxy grouts are pretty bomb-proof in comparison to the traditional grouts, for what it's worth. I used it in my tiled bathroom and it's extremely easy to clean; not the same as a kitchen counter application I know, but I've found it very impressively stain-resistant.

Another option is to mix tile around stove and sink areas, to get its best qualities (heat resistance, no need for hot pads/trivets), with something smoother like soapstone or marble or stainless in areas where you'll be doing pastry etc.

If you haven't yet, take a gander at Jane Powell's book Bungalow Kitchens for some really stellar recreations of period-appropriate tile counters.

I am completely astounded by these reponses. If majority on this forum is willing to put white grout with white subway tile behind their stove where spaghetti sauce will be flying while simmering, why so anti grout? It is the same grout, mind you. You are willing to risk red spaghetti stained grout on your expensive white subway tile and grout but not so on the counter. Hmmm. I simply don't get it. BTW, I think the look/esthetics/grossness would be more at risk if the red spaghetti sauce did not come out of the white backplash grout.....

If there was some other way to apply a tile backsplash without using grout, I would have done it but there isn't.

Other than that, I would say avoid grout whenever possible. I hate my porcelain tile floor for several reasons but one big one is the grout.

Kaismom -- I had a white porcelain floor with white grout in my last rental condo, and frankly would rather stick a fork in my eye than have tiled kitchen floors ever again. My current backsplash tile has dirt-colored grout for exactly that reason!

That said, in terms of the functionality of tile counters, I personally find the bumpity-bump of the surface on par with the annoyance of crud-stained grout. Although it's great to be able to slap hot pans down at will.

But as folks have said above: rectified tile, smaller groutlines and epoxy grout have largely cured these ills in the modern kitchen tile countertop.

Thanks---we do indeed have Bungalow Kitchens, which I think is the source of some of my tile envy. :)

For those who have used epoxy grout, what kinds of challenges, if any, have you encountered with the install? We'd been told to find an expert installer (which makes sense anyway for a level counter) but I'm not even sure how to go about doing this. We do have a very large tile distributor in town and can certainly take a trip there to find out a bit more, but just a little wary of this. I've also been told that where we live, going with a more experienced installer will pretty much make the cost a wash versus stone, for whatever that's worth. We have granite now and like its performance (but hate its looks---the PO put a very low-end granite in with, apparently, a very poor install so there are seams everywhere; we also don't like its looks given that we're trying to keep the kitchen vaguely period-appropriate).

We have also contemplated mixing counter surfaces---the counter on the right by the refrigerator is intended to be a baking counter, so it would be easy to do that one with a different material.

Top candidates if we don't go with tile are wood (lots of concerns there with water in particular, though), soapstone, or a green solid surface material of some variety (keep looking but can't seem to find one with a track record we're happy with, though). So, no clear winners...*sigh*

We have a 30-year-old tile counter that was probably installed really quickly when the house was built (as part of a large development). I'm sure that the grout was not sealed, as an expert installer would do these days. The white tile is now cracked, and the grey grout is really hard to clean.

In a period kitchen, I much prefer the look of wood counters. Would there be any way to do mostly wood, and use tile on either side of the sink to deal with the water issue?

My husband installed our tile counters 17 years ago. I'm not sure what grout he used other than it is not a sand grout. Several years ago we added another counter to the kitchen and might have used a newer grout. It all looks the same now however. I don't recall any drama with the kitchen tile install verses the several bathrooms and showers we have tiled.

If you are patient and can follow directions you should be able to tile. How are you at laying out projects before you start? Much of the time devoted to a tile job is spent before any tile is adhered to a surface. We encouraged some friends of ours to tile their own backsplash. They felt stupid because they spent almost three hours planning this small backsplash before they started but that's how it is. Of course they saved $1000 and it turned out great so they didn't feel too bad.

That being said, I understand the appeal of wood counters. They always look beautiful. I don't know how casual your kitchen look is but have you thought about a linoleum counter? It's a little OT but my house has remnants of old linoleum counters in the basement and they wear like iron but still have more of a softness to them.