Decisions, decisions

We're still making decisions about our kitchen but mostly we're making decisions about who to hire to do our kitchen. The first company* to come out has been insistent that he can't give us an estimate until we pick our counter and tile. We thought we had our counter but found a couple more enticing options on the website and asked to see a few that had not been brought over to us (specifically Rolling Fog and Pelican White, if you're keeping track). But the counter person has not been particularly responsive, so in an effort to keep moving, we took our borrowed Peppercorn White sample to the tile store that had been recommended to us and got to work.

See anything you like? After walking around a few larger displays (thanks to IKEA, among other things), we know that we like offset tiles, like subway tile patterning, rather than tiles that line up vertically. We don't like the tiny decorative glass ones that we loved so much when designing an accent tile in our bathroom. We think they would be too busy in our kitchen. We do, however, seem to like some kind of texture or pattern more than just plain white subway tiles. So here are some options we're considering.

This one is probably *too* textured, but it was kind of cool.

Too much Turkish sauna-vibe maybe? 

We like it! But would it be too busy for a full backsplash?

Hard to tell from the picture but it's sort of iridescent.

For this one, we like the wavy pattern on top, but in the white just below it.
 

In the meantime, a second company* came out and more reasonably told us he would give us some baseline prices in a few days, taking into account our general counter and tile preferences. We plan to push back on company 1 to insist on the same. When we asked to see the additional two counter options, he said we would have to travel about 30 miles to the counter store and pick which one we liked definitively before he could give us prices. Now, I understand that our selection impacts price. But wasting a Saturday to pick out countertops before we even pick out our installer seems a bit much to task. We may have to move down to company 3* and drop 1 before they get very far.


*I'm using "company" as shorthand but in reality, most of these people are just single contractors who then subcontract out the counter and do all the installation of the rest by themselves.