If you post your question over on the Discussions side of the forum, you'll get a lot more people seeing your post. Good luck!

I will disclaim this post by telling you am no expert. I am a diyer. We are doing our kitchen and trying to stay with a more vintage style look. I also hate the idea of a "traditional" style backs plash of tile, stone, glass and everything else I keep seeing. We are doing wood behind our sink and counter area to keep the water from damaging the wall. I know it seems counter intuitive - wood - but if you seal it right, wainscoting of some sort has been used for many generations. I decided to stain mine, much like the pic I added below. [Rustic Bedroom[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/rustic-bedroom-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_715~s_2111) by College Station Home Builders Ellis Custom Homes LLC The wood is easy and cheap. It comes in tons of profiles at HD and Lowes, look for the 3/4 pine profile boards. Most all the profiles you can use either side of the board for different profile options. It is kind of time consuming to sand, stain and do many coats of poly (I did 5 on mine), but if you painted it would probably be much quicker, I just love the look of color stain (I did almost the same color as the photo above). I did the entire 8' (from counter to ceiling)wall and another 4' (from ceiling to floor) section on the other corner for under $150, another $30 for stain and polyurethane. As far as the stove, I am not sure if you can or should run the wood behind it. For aesthetics, we are putting a vintage tile right behind the stove. Honestly I have yet to find a new tile that looks nice or would go in our kitchen, however, I have found plenty of neat looking old stuff in reclamation warehouses and even on Ebay that is nice and even cheap. I am personally only running the tile up a bit, but I am one of those horrible OTR microwave people (unavoidable in my tiny kitchen) so I wont need much tile, probably only 5 6x6 pieces. But my point is there are other places to shop to find some really neat and unique stuff besides the expensive tile shops. Good luck.

Mexican white 'field tile" and accent tiles from http://www.finecraftsimports.com/ fine Crafts and Imports out of Camarillo, CA. GREAT company to work with BTW! We got the mural here https://mexican-tile.net/Kitchen-Tile-Mural-Mexican-Kitchen--P2317632.aspx , also a good company; albeit a bit slow, but the mural comes from Mexico. BTW, Suggest you have a pro install the mural, because if you break one of the mural tiles you are SOL........

I'd go for a glass tile in a light grey. Glass will help bounce light around more to help the kitchen feel bigger and the grey will tie in with the floors. I'll just add that you may want to swap the fridge for a counter depth one because that's a small kitchen and that current one is DOMINATING the room.