Thanks everyone for replying. hlove ~ Thanks for including those photos. Circus ~ I love the look of flared log posts and the open floorplan with a loft. I really dislike wooden cabinetry (looks dated too quickly). I also really don't like brown and beige and gravitate towards the cool watery colour tones (with wood for warmth). I would hardly describe my choices as "schizophrenic" (or any design choice for that matter-it is demeaning to people who suffer with that illness and who are probably already ostracized from general society). Zoe ~ Thanks for including those pictures. I'd love to see how your white trim will look. Marcolo ~ I guess modern rustic does describe what I'm going for? FWIW, we are not building a log cabin, it's a 6000 sq foot house framed with logs (so all of our walls are drywall).

A real wood butcher block top would look a LOT better. It's not only the grout lines, although that's a biggie. It would just look, well, "college dorm apartment", without the inexpensiveness of it. You can be creative on a budget, but sometimes thinking outside the box needs to stay outside the box if you want a certain look. If you're doing the tiling, it might end up being as expensive as a nice Boos butcher block. (A lot more than Ikea) If you have to pay to have it tiled, granite slab would be cheaper. You could even do a simple stained plywood top with real wood edging for a fraction of the tile and have a nice looking counter until your budget recovered to get the one you really want.

As Avanti Tile states, a concrete slab install (ie. the thing under the carpet is concrete slab) shouldn't have an issue with cracking of tiles. We say "shouldn't" because we assume the tile setter will be contracted, and paid, to do a TREMENDOUS amount of subfloor preparation. I always make the statement that carpet hides the WORST subfloors in the world. Because of this, it is normal to budget "worst case scenario" for this which is $3-$4/sf simply for concrete subfloor preparation. The thing that causes tile floors to crack - wooden subfloors that are do not have the right deflection rating for tile. This is a completely different animal and it is what causes such HIGH rates of problems with tile. Again, this is WOODEN SUBFLOORS sitting over wood joists. This is where the high rate of concern comes in. But a HIGH END flooring professional who knows how to assess subfloor deflection ratings will have the ability to FIX the subfloor deflection rating. It isn't cheap. It takes a bit of skill. New plywood/Avantech has to be added. Floor heights are going to change. Doors probably have to be taken down and trimmed....but this is all possible. If the company offers HIGH END installations. So....back to reality. First things first: which subfloor do you have? Concrete or wood? Is this a house, a condo, a townhouse?

https://www.schluter.com/schluter-us/en_US/Profiles/For-Walls/Decorative/Schluter%C2%AE-RONDEC-DB/p/RONDEC_DB