Boxer.. The house is a spanish ranch with Adobe bricks. The kitchen is currently rustic and will hopefully end up a happy marriage with rustic elements like rough cut exposed beams, wood t&g plank ceiling, and classic elements like large (57" red hood with polished stainless bands). I was originally thinking warm white cabinets. DH still likes that idea.. Now I feel I need some color..so inspired by an earlier post where I got a lot of pale painted cabinet ideas.. I am thinking pale green with yellow tones (as opposed to gray tones). The light in the kitchen is filtered with windows, and french doors and 2 big skylights. see rustic planks and beams on the ceiling the courtyard from the kitchen DH liked the idea of carrera slab as a BS.. I am not sure how cost effective that would be. It would kind of have the mirror opposite look of the soapstone I think.. Creamy with smoky veins Thanks again for inspiring us visually. I am just amazed at how you have organized all this info.. Hosenemesis: I agree about waiting till the counters are on.. but I am not good at the visual elements of the kitchen and really wanted to filter my choices. The tile stores make me feel small and stupid :)

Thanks so much for your comments! It's the same in real life - sometimes the marble seems to complement the cabinets perfectly & sometimes it looks off - plus that's only one piece and of course w/ marble, like any natural stone there will be variation from piece to piece... Re: proportion - I was going to do an insert (rectangle) of the mosaic with a chair-rail or pencil frame above the stove - but maybe I should put some of the "field" tile in there so it's not just a "blob" of mosaic... Re: field tile - I'm going to look at other options - I liked the marble b/c it's neutral but natural and has some movement and is of course very rich looking b/c it's marble... But I agree that looking at more pieces of it would give me a better feel. I had looked at a simple off-white ceramic that matched my cabinet color - but that seemed too blah. The house is Victorian and I've brought the molding details into the kitchen to tie it in, so I feel that glass subway tiles would be too modern, but there's so much out there, I'm taking squigs and jb1176's advice and going to look at more options. In the mean time I'm still wondering how I'm going to CLEAN those mosaic tiles when they get greasy...??? Thanks again! I'm off to look at colleges w/ DS so probably won't be on for a few days - and maybe I'll squeeze in a few side trips to tile stores and let you know what I find!

Do you mean like this? Mine has a Shelf as well.

Chemetal has some very cool looking products. My MIL loves her Corian BS for ease of cleaning, but she has an island cooktop. I would be nervous using Corian in a high heat area. You mentioned large format tile, so I am going to throw out another idea -- really large format tile. I don't want to clean grout in the shower, so we are using large sheets of Kerlite Plus on the 2 side walls. Each of the walls will be done in a single piece of material, so no grout lines! Kerlite is a porcelain stoneware tile that is 3mm thick (3.5 mm for the plus version which has a fiberglass backing and is recommended if you need to do cutouts, like for faucets). We paid $200 per 100x300 cm (39-3/8"x118-7/64") slab (about $6.15 sq ft) for the Kerlite Plus in Via Tornabuoni from the Elegance series (one of the more expensive color series they offer). It is a really pretty medium gray that looks like limestone. They have several different different series that have patterns that look like different types of natural stone, wood, concrete or solids. Our color was a special order from Italy that took several weeks, but the local distributor also had some colors in stock. The Buxy and Colors lines have some lovely cream, tan and gray shades that would probably look good in your kitchen, depending on the countertops, and my local distributor had several colors from those lines in stock and they were less expensive than the Elegance line. You could probably do the back of your enclosure with a single seam, and the sides and top with no seams. Kerlite can also be used for countertops with a mitered edge over a plywood base. It is heat resistant. Kerlite comes in the following sizes: • whole slab, 100x300 cm (approx. 39-3/8"x118-7/64"); • slab, 40x100 cm (15-3/4"x39-3/8"); • slab, 100x100 cm (39-3/8"x39-3/8"); • slab, 50x50 cm (19-11/6"x19-11/16"); • border tile, 4.9x100 cm (1-59/64"x39-3/8"). Our shower should be tiled in about 2 weeks, and I am really excited to see how it turns out. Here is a link that might be useful: Kerlite colors