Not, wanting to hi-jack, but some more explanation too! Hi Brooke! So nice to see you around the boards...I'm not here that much any more either. Hey, I'd love to bounce some dining room decorating ideas on you sometime though! I do get it, especially with the economy and what you said about declining home values almost everywhere. I think you have a beautiful space to be proud of, so I hope you don't have too distracting of regrets because I so love what you've done! How are the little ones? We saved money on our backsplash that's for certain - we installed it ourselves and saved there, too. Yes, the countertop slabs were a lot of money, if it were now - not last year, would I have had the guts to do it with this economy? Quite possibly not! We might not even have done the kitchen at all and kept waiting. But, we are planning on staying in this house for at least the next 22 years, possibly longer and I know I will love the marble that long -it's classic. Also, I try to remember "accept the things we cannot change...." I can't change the fact we spent the money, so I can't regret/stress/worry about it now either. Best of luck to you kittymerr - your kitchen - and rest of your home, is gorgeous so far, so you'll make the right decision for you and move on! Check out those tiles too, they would be beautiful in your space and I'm fairly certain you will be able to track down AKDO in your area!

@ raehelen, Thank you, and YES, I am soooo happy that the granite/BS search is behind me!! LOL @ jancy, the cabinet color that I chose was Coffee Clutch. The code for the color is D1-7. I have read of many others using Bittersweet Chocolate by BM and Black Bean by SW. But, the Coffee Clutch looked great to me at Ace, so I chose it. I did have to sand the cabinets to rough them up, and I primed them with a tinted primer first. I think I used Zinser 123. The cabinet and trim paint goes on really nice. I just brushed it on and it went on nice and smooth. Almost smooths itself out. Just use long strokes and plan on 2 coats. It dries hard and shiny. I did not have to poly over it. I painted them over a year ago and they've held up beautifully! The other nice thing was that the wood grain still shows through. It came out really well. Don't be afraid... go for it!! :)

Fwiw, I just mixed faux-marble quartz (Lagoon) with a Carrera backsplash and at least in it's pre-grouted state, I'm really happy. It was hard for me to find a backsplash that worked well with the grey-ish tones of the Lagoon, mostly because my cabinets are painted taupe. Anything that "matched" the cabinets seemed too brownish for the counters. The Carrera blends the two perfectly. I think it also works because I wound up using a very small-scale herringbone pattern, so the patterns in the marble tiles are less pronounced. Fwiw, I don't see the calacutta tiles that the OP posted working with a greyish quartz that's similar to Lagoon, and I'd also be concerned about pattern overload with a subway tile. But having worried about the fake-next-to-real problem, I wanted to at least add my experience that it can be done. One of the prettiest kitchens on here, done by a pro, is GW user @kompy, who used a different marble subway with Lagoon counters, and it looks stunning.

I'm assuming you've propped one of your White Dove cabinet doors against the marble & don't like the two together? Could you find an alternate slab? Slab marble is a more dramatic look than subway tile but if you don't like the slab.... Possibly add some trim pieces similar to this picture to your hood - not the doors but the trim pieces on the bottom of the hood. I'm not sure your hood shape could pull off the marble. I've seen pics of boxy marble hoods but they are usually in a contemporary kitchen without a traditional large crown molding (I do love your crown molding). edit: to clarify, your kitchen could totally pull off a slab marble backsplash. I'm just not sure how a marble hood would look in your hood style.