Thank you all so much! Starpooh - sure! Just let me know what I need to do and when. jen - The floors are bamboo. marti - The bigger window and door were added with the small addition. The original kitchen ended where the prep sink is. Everything past that was added on. breezy - You may have seen photos of our crazy house before but have not connected them back to the kitchen. I included a photo below of the center of our house. The upstairs rooms all overlook a pool on the lower level. vidyaram - Yes, that is the tile company. We used the smaller subway tiles and the pebble blend. The actual colors of our tiles are ivory (subways and pebble mix), sky grey and steel grey. The 'boulders' frame the pool and waterfall:

Joanie - Thank you for your opinion and your nice comment. I appreciate it! The woodwork in the home definitely comes into play. Cran - Thank you so much Cran. I have thought about adding blue tile... like a border or something. But I am also completely open to ripping out the hood tile. Linley posted some photos below that have a lot of texture. Is that what you are thinking too? As for your tile... take it from me... post a few photos here and let the guru's help you! They are wonderful! Sweeby - It looks like all arrows are pointing to more Spanish tiles (with or without some crackle tiles) Hey... I guess it confirms that I was on the right track in the beginning.... LOL Love the pictures! Dutchy - Wow...now that is a great mix of elements there. I visited the link and they said that the tiles were original to the house and that they salvaged them from around the windows. Nice! More were custom added from Mission Tile West. Igloochic - Hey now! That is a major switch! I can't believe any picture of mine is being used as an inspiration photo! Thanks for your dissenting opinion, but it sounds like you would vote for the hood tiles to stay, so... looks like sticking with Spanish is your vote too! :) Linley - Thanks for the pictures and the built in links! The antiquity Mission tiles are gorgeous! It is a very interesting way of adding color, especially combined with such an amazing texture. Remodelfla - Oh boy... have I ever checked them out! We even took a road trip to San Diego to see them in person. They are beautiful! We might have to go back there soon. I didn't use them initially due to a hood issue... it was due to the fact that we needed 4" tiles and their tiles were 4 1/4". Since we wanted to use the same tiles for the backsplash... I kind of stopped there. Sorry for the delay in responding. I was out of town this weekend. Thanks again for the ideas, links, and leads. We are hoping to go to a few more tile shops this week. In the meanwhile we are continuing on with our final inspection process. Thank you all!

Try showing DH pictures of counters patterned like yours with busy/patterned backsplashes like your samples and then those with plain backsplashes to give DH a sense of how each type looks with the strong-patterned counters. One of the best pieces of advice I got was “one ‘star’ in the kitchen, and yours is the counter...then the floor. I am not a fan of shinny, solid subway either but love crackle tile; it gives a subtlety that does not compete. Both Loews and Home Depot sell crackle wall tiles. You might also consider something other than the typical subway size...you could go larger/longer sizes. I saw several types of solid tiles at HD today that would compliment your counters, and they were not the typical, solid subway types. I get budget but the little, varied sized tile sheets; the arabesque shapes; and the stone patterns all are too busy with your counters...they compete instead of compliment. There are better budget friendly choices out there. Good luck!

WOW,, this is a hard choice! When I cover two options to look at each one individually, they all look like great possibilities. Seriously they all look good. My question is which one is what you like? I know, you don't know hence the post with images... The hard part is the each one of us has a different monitor with variations on lighting. When I look at all three together the right one looks too dark. But then I cover the other two and right one could really work. Then I go back to the middle one saying with the right lighting and maybe their is more gray veining in the counter that could bring that color out. I go back to the first and say it has a slight green hint to the gray color and looks gorgeous...I always lean toward green so this could just be me. Which one? Which one? If I were making the choice right now based on the colors I see before me, I would choose the far right. It does appear darker than the others but it feels like it works with the counters. And something about the far right doesn't have green and while dark it seems to really match the counter. And if you have lots of light coming into the space it is not going to look to dark. And just seeing all your options is giving me lots to think about in my own space ahead.