I pulled the lightest color from the upper cabinets, for the counter image. (Also edited to add sink.)

The countertop in not in. Someone just did a mock-up. Thank you

Would love it as a counter but it is porcelain recommended for floors and wall

It looks like real stone. Still beautiful, but now I'm a bit disappointed. :[

It would also be fantastic in a shower.

Very pretty! Love tgat shade of blue on your lowers and the tile!

It’s a 4.95 square foot tile. Not a stone. Are you saying it doesn’t work with Corian? Would you prefer white quartz? I think it needs a solid white counter not something busy.

"A perfectly good family sedan is only made ridiculous by the addition of leopard print seats. Save those for the Veyron."

This has to be the worst and most out of touch analogy ever. I suspect that no Veyron has leopard print seats and many family sedans do. Moreover they are more appropriate in a family sedan...

Handstitched leather Veyron seats: $150,000

Add leopard print: $34.95 (Walmart).

Tile is 24 inches x 48 inches.

"The wall has yo have the right prepwork to flatten it to receive it. Otherwise it cracks. Your wall would need rebuilding."

Maybe on a floor, but we're talking a kitchen backsplash here which gets less use than a shower wall. Bubba's got this.

Lisa:

Glacier White Corian is a perfect countertop choice; it's never had an argument with a backsplash, cabinet, or floor.

Convert to plug mold below your upper cabinets please. Don't ruin that beautiful run of splash with duplex receptacles please.

Beautiful backsplash and in the right place to be fully appreciated!!

Donald M. "Bubba" Cathy is an American billionaire businessman, senior vice-president of the fast-food chain Chick-fil-A. Might want to think twice about the Bubbas of the world.

Thank you for your input. In person colors are the same.

if you want it be sure and get champagne bronze hardware. You need something like that for completed look. Its a bit of a stagey element......you have the upper display nooks, along with hardware , you'll have it. When you just pop up the image in unfinished kitchen its a little hard to grasp but I can visualize it with a couple more choices.

I like it but I don't. The material looks gorgeous in the photo, and the combo looks good in mama_goose's mock-up, but looking at the actual pic of your kitchen it seems too "fancy", like there's a vibe mis-match -- casual/laidback vs upscale. What is the rest of your house like? A pic of the surrounding space would be helpful to see how this relates to the overall big picture.

I think it is stunning. It is fancy but it gives a wow factor to the plain cabinets. Use the cabinet pulls to tie it all together.

Already picked champagne bronze hardware😀

"Convert to plug mold below your upper cabinets please. Don't ruin that beautiful run of splash with duplex receptacles please."

@Joseph Corlett, LLC - you are so right. But look at the OP photos. Not only are there a number of outlet receptacles and light switches already in the backsplash, but they are in the center of the backsplash. It is unfortunate the OP or her KD didn't know about installing them low and horizontally (if you are not doing plugmold) so that they'd be so much less intrusive, and also easily hidden by coffee maker, toaster, etc. That backsplash's impact and beauty will be diminished by the receptacles and outlets scattered across the middle of it.

PLUGMOLD PICS:

I think it’s beautiful.

I was my own designer and contractor. Is it too late to move electric?

If you love it, go for it! It is just backsplash and an inexpensive one at that, compared to many of the backsplash choices we regularly see here. It won't be hard to install, just a few cuts, but make sure you try to pattern match some of the tiles for the best outcome. In 5 years if you are tired of it, it won't be a big expense to change out. People do that on this forum all the time.

I do agree about getting the electrician back out to get rid of the outlets and install plugmold. It will be worth the added expense.

I think it’s very pretty.

Hmm. Electrician just said it can’t be done. That junction wires can’t be covered up. Does t make sense to me

It can be done if you open your pocketbook. That is the reason I didn't get plugmold -- the way things were haywired in my kitchen would have meant a lot of re-wiring, and I didn't want to have to write a check that big - the one I wrote was plenty big already.

Ideally you would have a combination of plugmold with also a couple of outlets in the backsplash placed where you know you’ll want to plug in your toaster and/or coffee maker that many people leave plugged in all the time. Those couple outlets would be installed low and horizontal like the pics I posted above. I think to change what you have now your electrician will have to do a lot of work to move or remove; he is really saying it will cost you a very large amount of money. Electrical is about the most costly trade of them all in a kitchen reno. The electrical plan should have been thought out beforehand, but we all live and learn.

The ”easy and cheap” way to do new electrical is to remove the uppers and the drywall. That removes all of the barriers and allows everything to get yanked back up into the attic to create any junctions there.

Oh well, just put in the new uppers

"The ”easy and cheap” way to do new electrical is to remove the uppers and the drywall. That removes all of the barriers and allows everything to get yanked back up into the attic to create any junctions there."

Assuming the wires run through the attic, why would you need to remove upper cabinets or drywall? Deenergized wires don't have to have accessible junction boxes do they?

I am an absolute amateur at these things but it seems to me the seriousness of the electrical outlet issue is inversely proportional to the amount of stuff you keep on your counters.

If your counters hold gadgets, knives, paper towels, and the other items often seen in working kitchens then the visual lines are already going to be interrupted enough to minimize the impact of your electrical outlets.

"I am an absolute amateur at these things but it seems to me the seriousness of the electrical outlet issue is inversely proportional to the amount of stuff you keep on your counters."

Yes, this is true. LOL!

Question about the plugmold idea:

It seems to me that if the plugs are way up under the counters the cords to everything are going to be much more visible since the cords are low in all of the appliances that are typically plugged in. Or, am I missing something?

I think I planned my kitchen around this tile! Hopefully it will arrive someday- it's been out of stock everywhere I could find it for months, and the original date passed like a GRRM deadline. I'm using Ikea Bodbyn off white, the cream just made my sample sing in a way that brighter whites didn't. We're doing Marmoleum Click Caribbean for floors, it looks like the reverse of the tile (primarily the gold/bronze with a little blue and white). We're probably doing the tile on counters as well, because we don't want not-quite-the-same white counters against off white cabinets, but I haven't been able to find a bronze color I liked (and we're leaning towards wrapping the appliances/hood in a brown/bronze vinyl, and we don't want to complicate that any more than it is already).

We're also putting outlets in it. It would be nice if we didn't need to, but there's only a cabinet above 2 of the 4 outlets, so it is what it is.

@julieste - in answer to your question, in my post above I said ”Ideally you would have a combination of plugmold with also a couple of outlets in the backsplash placed where you know you’ll want to plug in your toaster and/or coffee maker that many people leave plugged in all the time. Those couple outlets would be installed low and horizontal like the pics I posted above.”

That way, the plugmold solves the number of outlets required by Building Code, while the outlets in the backsplash allow appliances to be plugged in unobtrusively. I’ll add that angled plugmold is my preference over straight plugmold for this purpose.

When I renovated my bathroom I wanted to move an outlet so it wouldn't be a cutout in the mirror. My electrician came out and thought this would be an easy fix until he started cutting out the new hole. The vent pipe for the toilet was positioned right where I wanted the outlet. I could move it further from the mirror on the other side of the vent pipe, but this wall was an exterior brick wall that is now an inside corner of an L shaped ranch (addition). Getting to that corner to re-run wires was going to be 4-5 hours of labor, moving the vent pipe was another expensive option. I decided having an outlet in the mirror was better than spending hundreds of dollars to move the outlet.

Although we notice things like this, and I still look at this outlet with some level of contempt, no one else takes notice. We are so used to seeing outlets that we generally just look past them and don't register their existence. If you think about the kitchens in your friend's homes can you picture where the outlets are? Have you paid any attention to them? Probably not, and no one else is going to pay any attention to yours.

Your electrician is right that you can't just cover up electrical. He is wrong that they can't be legally removed or moved, but it is at a cost and sometimes the cost isn't justified.

Personally I love your backsplash and counter choices. But only you can decide if you can afford to move the recepticals. Would be nice, but the kitchen will still be lovely. Look into Corian wall plates if you can't move them (I got some for my bathroom from a third party, but I don't remember the name).

Herb flavor has a great idea about going with champagne bronze hardware in your kitchen.

Thank you. Already have the champagne bronze😀

"Electrician just said it can’t be done. That junction wires can’t be covered up."

You need a better electrician. The boxes can easily be moved even into the upper and lower cabinets if necessary.

"The boxes can easily be moved even into the upper and lower cabinets if necessary."

No, not always. It depends what's going on behind the walls. Possible = probably. Expensive = maybe. Easily = Not necessarily.

This is stunning!

I had a light switch moved after everything was wired and, and boy did it cost me. I was ok with it tho bc I did NOT want it right in the middle of my solid glass backsplash. And I would not have gotten used to it over time. I would have been annoyed every time I saw it.

Sometimes there is enough cable slack for the electrician to turn the box sideways/horizontal and move it close to the countertop. No junction boxes needed for that.

To further minimize the appearance there are specialty colors for receptacles and matching cover plates, you can probably find a gray that looks neutral and inoffensive against the tile. Brands like lutron or levitron or legrand have different grays - cool/warm/dark/light.

what is the name of the tile?? It’s gorgeous!

It’s Maximo vita Bella at floor and decor

Outlet covers

A good way down this thread is a post from Old at2be about how she

Decoupaged her outlet covers

Another thread about outlet covers to blend into backsplash - the Houzz poster Cloud Swift did it with a company called Columbia Gorge Stoneworks. Links to that thread and their website:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2575553/cloud-swift-your-outlet-covers

https://stonewallplates.com

@Lisa Carr, Did you end up using this backsplash?! We just saw it at Floor and Decor and were WOW-ed by this tile. Wondering what it looks like installed if you have a picture? :)

Didn’t use it and haven’t decided on anything yet. I got discouraged when someone said it didn’t go with the style of my cabinets

Oh that’s too bad..it’s amazingly beautiful. It’s hard to go by the mock up, as far as saying they don’t go together. Mock ups are really helpful but lighting and so many other things need to be taken into consideration.

Lisa Carr - that tile is gorgeous! I see it in floor and decor every time I go in there and think to myself if I didn’t like monochromatic colors so much THAT would be the tile in my kitchen and bathroom! I love all of the large format tiles they have in there and used one of them in my bathroom remodel. Did you end up using this on your backsplash?