I am sure your kitchen will be stunning once finished. You will have a very clean and updated look that you can take in any direction and make it what you want it to be with your dishes, necessary and unnecessary items on the counters. You have some lovely items. I love the faucet.

Have you explained to your husband that as you are (probably?) going to be in that room a lot more than him, you need to feel comfortable, and any compromises should be made somewhere else in the house - this from experience - compromises make no one happy! However, even if you don't get the built-in look you want, you can always accessorize like mad.

The faucet is about the only thing in the kitchen that comes close to my style preferences. Even at that, it's a rather far cry from the faucet I wanted. Oh well, we do both have to live with it. I do the cooking but he does the dishes. We share general cleanup duties.

I'm also not going to be able to accessorize that much so I have to carefully pick and choose my pieces. That's why I'm agonizing so much over the little accent tiles.

To be perfectly honest, it's hard to tell the style of the cabinets. Are the upper cabs going to be open or are you planning on doors? What are the style of the doors.

I think your granite is very pretty. It's hard to tell the actual color of the walls. Are they gray?

I like your choice of hardware.

The walls are purple with slight gray undertones (Behr violet shadow). It's the one thing about the kitchen that I really like.

The upper cabinets will have doors. They're being refinished now. They're fairly basic framed squares made of the same wood as the rest of the cabinets.

I can offer a process to help you choose: make color xeroxes of both choices, full-size, and put them up on the wall. Nothing helped me as much as that in choosing a backsplash pattern. Good luck--fwiw I love that granite.

Is your wall color lilac?

I think the dragonfly and flower/crest go together OK and to me, lends credence to a traditional and not contemporary style. Will the shelves remain lilac with no doors on the cabinets? That also seems more traditional than contemporary. What are you seeing that seems modern?

I don't really advocate this but have you tried tears?

"Oh DH, I have listened to you and I love you and I know where you are coming from but I am getting physically stressed with the direction this kitchen is headed. Can we take a break to look at some pictures/gallery together to talk more about where we want this to end up? I respect your opinions and style but would like you to respect mine and for us to both love the finished product?"

Only 1/2way LOL...

whencit - the color is actually "violet shadow" but it's pretty close to lilac. The cabinets will have regular doors on them. Purple paint on the edges of the shelves is to hide the cr*ppy particleboard.

The "modern" feel to me is coming from the fact that it's all hard, cold surfaces in cool colors. There's nothing warm. Even the wood has a glossy finish to it.

Tears won't work.

You might just be at the freaking-out stage of a kitchen remodel. It sounds like everything has already been decided. If you are only allowed to pick the back splash, make sure you get what's going to make you happy.
What are your appliances like. If you don't already have them, you could make sure they are more traditional than contemporary.
If you can't accessorize -- you might at least consider a large oriental-style rug or one that suits your sense of taste. It could be just the thing to add warmth to your kitchen .

I'd accent with sage green to warm it up. I'd also keep the backsplash simple to showcase your lovely granite.

Good luck!

annie: Yes, I'm at the freaking out stage. Things are close to done and they're not looking right. One thing I found out last night is that the cabinet stain is not the stain that I had agreed to. Due to some errors and usage of different techniques, it turned out much paler and yellower. Since Hubby did it (and worked really hard) I can't complain too much.

whencit: The sage green is a great idea (provided I can figure out where to put it) - especially since our planned great room addition (which the kitchen will overlook) is going to be sage.

You'll feel better once it's all in place and done. It will look very nice, you and hubby have chosen very pretty choices.

My input on your accent tiles, is I don't think the two really go together. The dragonfly is so whimsical and the crest more decorative....Since you only have six, I'd either do all six in the same - I'd do the baroque crest just because I think while I love dragonflys, I may tire of them in a few years and those tiles are impossible to remove without damaging the entire wall. Remember, you can always change rugs, wall color, accents, wall art etc. The stuff cemented to the wall has to be neutral enough that you won't tire of it easily.

One other idea is to use all three of the pewter selections in the baroque, romaneque and celtic. I'd do them in the order of baroque, romanesque, celtic, baroque, romanesque, celtic. I like the square one inbetween the two round ones.