Yvette Im sorry your upset, It does look lighter in todays photos to me. You have very poor photo quality and in truth you are comparing a Showroom floor with white marble or glass contrast relfecting and a complete different lighting schematic to your tub alcove. There is some solice in lighting. This is repeated on these forums time and again. Stone itself comes in dye lots and VERIES drastically. Stone wicks moisture, from thinset substrate and grout as it cures it gets darker before it lightens. Some thinsets can take 30 days to fully cure, some portland grouts do normalize over 7-10+ days. and there is a dozen things that can go wrong with hand mixed and installed grout. I cannot see close enough the details of your install but I can tell you I have had to watch sales people at tile shops like a hawk in that they are usually not a person to take advise from. Can you be 100% certain they sold you the proper color/brand or did they sell you something similar to sell you something. ? You should have more recourse if you Payed a tile professional to source and purchase the materials themselves grout included and if you have a contract and stayed hands off. One thing homeonwers dont consider when they get involved with these things is the importance of putting all the liability in the contractors hands to afford recourse. People that do the shopping finding deals choosing materials, and then hiring labor have little to no recourse so i hope thats not you.. I suggest further patience and see how it lightens, play with lighting and start to focus on other aspects of your room..

If I were you I would go to a local garden center, not a big box store, at a time when the employees aren't busy and ask for recommendations. Before you go be sure to notice how much sun the area gets, is the sun morning or afternoon sun, is it dappled or is it full sun. So maybe on a sunny Saturday or Sunday chart how the sun hits the bed every couple of hours. Even if it's every 3 hours that would still be helpful. I'm not sure telling a plant nursery employee that you had hydrangeas there and they grew well would be helpful enough, since some hydrangeas take more sun than others. If you don't have a local nursery then maybe look at pieris, plum yew, mahonia and gardenia. I don't have much of a deer problem but I see these plants suggested as deer resistant. The yew may be too small but it is a lovely plant everywhere I have seen it - not as lovely as hydrangea but I do love the needle foliage on the yew. I have mahonia in my yard but I don't like it. I see banana shrub and bottlebrush buckeye are on UGA's deer resistant plants list. I love both of those shrubs. Banana shrub is not particularly beautiful to me but I love the smell. I have a beautiful pink bottlebrush buckeye in my yard; mine is more like a very small tree than a shrub. You have my sympathies. I don't have a deer problem but I do have a bunny problem. During the intermission between the death of my dog and the time we got another my bunny problem was terrible. My dogs are indoor pets but we play together out in my fenced back yard a lot; I guess the smell of them keeps the bunnies away now. Those darn bunnies did a lot of damage in the interim, though, and they still chew in the unfenced area of my yard. Good luck whatever you decide.

Prize for most interesting backsplash of the day. A pro painter may charge a few thousand dollars to do an excellent job on the cabinets. If it's the mosaic backsplash (complete with broken Heineken beer bottle?!, etc.) that really is the number one thing not to your taste, then replace it for the same amount of money instead of painting the cabinets. Don't spend money to decorate around things you don't like. The cabinets look like the "designer English cottage" style popularized by the Smallbone cabinet company in the late 1980's and early 1990s. Several US companies followed suit with similar fish and diamond fretwork and wooden dish racks. They were often shown with colorful handmade square tiles, not this style of mosaic. There's a Smallbone kitchen image (very much like yours) on this page: http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/1980s-decor.html

I’ve used those gel stains before to turn 70’s cabinets into cherry cabinets with extremely good results. Unfortunately the ceiling is rough and would have to be sanded before anything could be applied. The cost to pay someone to stand on 30 ft scaffolding and sand overhead isn’t in my budget, even if I could find someone willing to do the work.