Hope this helps....Here's my mid 80's kitchen with tile. I did the full backsplash only behind the stove and ran one row of bullnose along the rest of the counter. Wallpaper is pretty neutral (except the border!) so it's a bit hard to see, but that's what's on the rest of the walls. We're in the process of remodeling in order to sell our home and so the Walker Zanger tile that I've LOVED for the past 24 years had to go last week. I was in a funk all day when we tore it up. Took down the wallpaper and with the lack of color in the room (granite now) we'll be tiling the full 18" of backsplash this time in order to try and inject a little life back into my formerly homey kitchen! BUT the single row of tile worked fine for me in a very busy kitchen for many years.... and definitely saved money at the time. Here's another old one.... sorry for the mess.... cooking Christmas dinner!! I think I was cooking with the liquor and not drinking it! :)

I think I understand you wall situation, but not sure what gaps you have with the granite -- along the sides? Did you tell them there would be tile on the sides? If not, they should have fit that in closely enough to just caulk it. I have a hutch-like cabinet arrangement in between two walls and that's what we did. No tile or side treatment at all. Each side of my kitchen has cabinets ending in a wall or tall cabinet. We took the splash up to the upper cabinets and ended it at the side -- nothing turning the corner. That would be my first preference. There are some photos of terraced tile sides here. I can't think of names of who has them though. I think that looks better with more contemporary looks, possibly arts & crafts and more modern, and with tiles that have some accents, color variation or other feature that helps with the visual movement. In a more traditional setting, if you have to carry the tile around on the sides, I would probably bring it around more evenly. You could consider taking it to the ceiling -- as if the entire alcove were tiled and you plopped these pieces inside. Take a photo or drawing of the elevation of that wall and make several copies. Draw it out several different ways and try coloring with pencils if you want to play with colors too. Look at them several different times and see what you think overall. Even inexact little pencil lines on a drawing will help you get the feel and will probably tell you which way you like it best in your setting.

Thanks prill...I'm leaning towards only doing tile in area to the left of the casing...then in the window area just doing paint and the casing down to the counter. I guess I'll just have to be more dilligent with cleaning. The Reef was the first tile that spoke to me...I really thought I was going to go for a more solid blue, but reef is so much softer....it allows me to play up the color of the walls more...not that I have a lot of walls...And, I found out that my designer can get it for about 12.50/sf where I was quoted around $15/sf.

Funny you should ask! Tile guy finished BS on Friday. Not everyone will like it, but we do......and we get the deciding vote :) Yes it was nice to not have to cut around the outlets (or in our case pay somebody to do it), but that's not really why we did it. Our kitchen, DR and LR are basically one big space. If we had tiled the entire space from countertop to bottom of cabinets, we felt it really closed it in too much. We preferred to keep some of the original paint in some areas for balance. Greenhaven made a good point. If you're not careful how you split the space, it could look like you just ran out of tile instead of being intentional. We also had to cover the damage done where the old 6" granite backsplash was removed. I dont have any fancy reveal pictures but hopefully this will give you an idea. My cabinets are not nearly as red/orange as pictured. I think it really boils down to how your own space is configured to decide.