I just posted over on the kitchens board and would love to have input from you guys, too. As some of you know, I have been struggling with my kitchen counters and tile for over a year now. It's along story, but the end is in sight. I'll put a link below. If you'd care to weigh in on my tile layout, I'd be grateful for your advice. Thanks! Here is a link that might be useful: My post on the Kitchens Board

Thanks, all. Yes, the island really is 17' long! And the beauty of it is the aisle is more than 42" wide, so there is plenty of room for 2 or 3 or 4 people to work. The ends of the island are pony walls about 4" thick and as high as the backsplash w/o planter boxes (which just lift off, BTW) -- sided with a distressed hardwood tongue-and-groove that is used elsewhere in the house on walls. We don't have to keep the pony walls, and if we went with a no-backsplash option, they would go, anyway. To be replced with ? ? ? The idea of splitting the island with a walkway is interesting. But the sink is centered in the island and would have to be moved, and we would have to deal with the flooring then. There are some spare pavers in a pile in the yard near the spare brick(!), but it would involve chiseling away at the slab to try to recess the new pavers to the proper level. I never thought about rebuilding the planter boxes of a different material. That is an interesting idea. I've thought about putting the WOW granite on the range backsplash only, with a simpler quartz on the counters (there is also a groovin' wet bar across the atrium from the island, so it needs to be updated at the same time with new cabinets/countertop). But I'll probably need to do some photoshop mock-ups of various granite patterns. I wouldn't want it all to get too busy. Pavers, bricks, slab wood, pebbles, distressed wood, trees, loud granite, stainless range hood -- yowza! We may have to be tranquilized. I'll try to take some better pictures tonight so it all makes more sense. But here is a shot that gives you a peek at the pony wall on the end of the island. The wood on it matches the wood on the living room wall at the far end of the shot and on the "front" wall on the right side of the shot. The brass doorknob in the lower right corner of the shot is the front door.

Hi all, Thank you so much for your feedback! Unfortunately, the stove needs to stay where it is given the tight budget. I actually don't mind its location at all, just that it complicates things when it comes to what should go on the wall. I'm really liking the fridge next to the window in the Brooklyn galley - that would've been ideal for my kitchen as well, but I have a very narrow kitchen (barely 3 feet of clearance across the aisle) and my current fridge, which is close to counter-depth, will not even work in that space. I'm not sure what to make of the comments about the open shelving. We'll be living in this apt for a long time and we don't plan on having kids - we barely use two shelves per wall cabinet right now. We plan to replace the open shelving with wall cabinets when we move in the distant future, so going with open shelving now doesn't worry us. At this point, I think I'm leaning towards paint rather than tile. The pictures posted here were very helpful. Please post more pics of kitchens with the same layout if you have them! I will post my After pictures at the end of the month when my kitchen is (hopefully) done. Demolition starts tomorrow!

I gather the photos are of the old Formica. Can you tell us exactly which Formica color you are getting? If the new countertop color is too cool for you to find a color to bridge to the cabinet color, then the counter is the wrong color for you cabinets. I doubt that's the case. Especially since you describe the counter as beige and not gray. I'm sure there is a tile that will work, but until we have a better idea what the counter color is, we won't be able to make suggestions. Kitchen photos with more uniform lighting (either at night under artifical lights or daytime when there isn't direct sun) would help us see the cabinets and current counter color better. Lastly, you can and probably should wait until the counters are in to choose your backsplash. That way you'll be able to look at the cabinets and counter next to each other in your actual space and actual lighting, and you can view tile samples in that setting. It takes a lot of uncertainty out of the process.