A splash of this...

When you build a house, there are going to be a few decisions you regret. Right? We had one that figured out pretty soon after we moved in. Actually, we hadn't even moved in yet. It was our kitchen backsplash.

Originally, I just felt that a backsplash should only come up about 18 inches all around. You know, I had never even had a backsplash before! All of our previous kitchens had just been painted without tile. We added a little one to our house in Evanston behind the stove.

In any case, I thought going all the way up the wall looked a little bizarre in the kitchen-very bathroom like. Plus, I liked the idea of saving money on tile. Our tile for the kitchen was about $25/sf and so by not doing the tile to the ceiling we saved a little money. And we needed that, since the tile was the one area where we blew our budget completely.

So...the kitchen looked like this:



(That's a builder photo)

Here's one of ours:



And another:



It just didn't look finished to us. Not to mention we couldn't find a paint color to put above the tile because we were afraid of clashing with the grey, so we went with plain white.

I've come to the conclusion that I like the tile to the ceiling if it's ceramic. Glass looks a little too bathroomy. And also, the space has to be fairly small. If it's bigger, it makes much more of a statement. With our windows and sink the additional tile doesn't actually stand out that much. It just makes more sense. Here is after:





What do you think??