If you go to the current thread about cannisters, there's a pic in there from Shelayne that shows a short backsplash, and it is GORGEOUS!
HTH!
Amy

I'm sorry, I am going to be honest, I can't imagine tiling half the wall looking ok.

You say that you don't want too much interest coming from lots of new tile. To achieve that you probably want to just do the subway tile and drop the mosaic. If you add the mosaic you will have basically an 18 inch space with 3 different materials in possibly 3 or more different colors.

I think it is OK to do a shorter tiling, but in the cases I have thought it looked good it has been very simple and did not include any accent tile. I am considering doing it in my kitchen - to me it has a farm house feel. Keep in mind that you will have the tile and the paint above it, then the cabinet finish above that - that is why I thought the accent tile might be a bit much. Just because we have never seen what you are suggesting doesn't mean it would not look really nice - if you do the accent tile I would suggest that either the paint is similar in color or tone to the tile or that the accent tile is - the goal of avoiding a striping look (unless that is what you want :)

I hope I do not offend anyone by posting some photos of other GW kitchens (saved before I made it a habit of saving photos with user names so I could find a link to their photo.)

Really nice top trim on tile to accent the shorter run.

This is definitely a really lovely GW tile, I wish I had a photo of the whole kitchen (ore remembered whose it was.)
It is a carrera mini-brick

One additional question - why would the tile have to go all the way up the sink wall? Would you not stop it at the 18" height of the rest? Include a photo for more specific feedback of kitchen and of tile you are considering.

Good luck.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and willingness to help. I'm looking right now to see if I've got a before pic of the kitchen, I found a picture we took when we previewed the house for the first time, I am scanning it in.

Sherrmar, I touched on why I don't want to fill it with tile in my original post, I don't want the wall to look too heavy with tile, and I don't want the shine of new tile to look out of place in an old farmhouse kitchen.

Clergychick, I loved that backsplash tile! I wish that style would 'go' with my house because I'd totally copy it!

Sparkle, the paint tone would be the same tone as the tiles, not a bright accent color or anything. Thanks for showing those pics. One of the reasons I don't want to go all the way up is the big wall over the sink. I don't think I want the backsplash to continue up into tiles there, also I don't want to put an accent area over the stove, with a tile mural or area of interest, because the stove will be replaced with one without a control panel eventually, then the area with a special tile area will not be centered.

So, onto the picture, I don't know how to put one in this post so I will add it to my page. See that big wall over the sink? I don't want the tile all the way up to where the bottom of the counters is, that will look too high in my opinion. But what do you all think? I'm open to ideas.

Hi Cant - I don't see your pix by clicking on your name. If you get a photobucket account (free) you can upload your pix and then copy the html line and paste it here.

I agree that shelayne's half backsplash looks incredible. You could do similar and I bet the accent tile would look lovely. You may want to move the accent up to below the bullnose since you may not want the accent strip so low.

Dianalo, thanks for the help, I attempted to add it to photobucket and then cut and paste the html here but it's not working, it'll show in the preview but then tell me the url is wrong. I don't have time to keep playing with it, I'll attempt it again later.

I'm going to attempt a pic add in again.

Here is a link that might be useful:

I wanted to bump this thread up so hopefully someone will see and have some thoughts now that there's a pic!

I did a kitchen with washable wallpaper and half mosaic tile and it turned out awesome and was easy cause I did the wallpaper around the plug in outlets and the tile just below them