We are having this dilemma in real time. they just stained the 1st floor of our 2013 built home. I wanted to refresh because the kids beat them up with scooters, etc when we first moved in and also the color ambered a lot over the years and was looking VERY orange... so we said let's just do the first floor since the 2nd is in relatively good shape but does have that more warm/amber tone. So now we have a custom blend downstairs going up the front stairs and the existing Early American on White Oak on the 2nd floor. See pics... I thought I could live with it, but now I'm 2nd guessing and wondering if we need to do the 2nd floor too... thoughts, photos welcome!

-Prep sink. This may be useful in a multi-cook household or a huge kitchen, but I hardly ever used the one I had and it was just once more thing to clean. -Garbage disposal. My worms do a much better job, don't take up electricity and never smell or require cleaning. -Fancy multi-function toaster, oven, rotisserie, pizza, etc. Does nothing well. -Trash can with a motion sensor. Everyone I know who has one has them break in under a year. Mine only took 4 months to break. A foot pedal is much more reliable and a lot cheaper to replace. -Stainless steel sink. What a pain to clean. You can call it patina, butafter a while they don't look clean no matter what you do. (The one in my apartment right now looks positively foul no matter how much Barkeeper's Friend you use.) Of course cast iron will eventually chip and I don't know if the granite composite sinks will stand the test of time -Range-top grill. Only pay for these if you have a bodacious vent system and no way to have an outdoor grill. They are better than the George Foreman-like grills but not a patch on a decent outdoor gas grill or charcoal. ---- As for sink tip-outs... since discovering them I have knocked the front panel off every sink in every home I've rented or owned and installed these. In the bathroom they are perfect for the tweezers and nail files and such. In the kitchen, the sponges, scrubbers, stoppers and the toothbrush you use for cleaning around the faucet plate are neatly hidden away but close at hand. Love 'em!

It's hard to give you a definitive "will look good or bad" based off a line drawing or verbal description. What you're describing isn't outlandish or out there on the edge of conventional design. It sounds well considered and thought out. For generic tile installations I usually caution that white grout can look stark. However, you're not using much of it, and you're using it for a reason. Changing grout color within a wall, I've done it fairly often. I've never had a negative issue with it. A single grout color on a wall can unify an installation composed of different tiles. Changing grout as you change tile can make each component more independent. It's hard to describe, but the differences can be subtle. It really depends on the vision you have and what you're trying to achieve on that wall. When in doubt, mock ups can be your friend. You can use your actual tile and use grout sticks for rough comparisons. Or you can go all-in with a tiled and grouted mock up board.

I don't think it will make any difference. If you have decent water pressure in your house, 1/2" should be entirely sufficient. I have two heads in my master bath shower that are each 1/2" and are teed off of a single 1/2" feed" pipe: there are no problems with adequate flow.