Thank you loobab,

the poster boards are a great idea and we do need to be more thoughtful about trying colors out in the kitchen. All your ideas for bringing the colors together are very helpful. I also like the honeyed white. Thanks again for all these wonderful ideas!

Do you think this combination works any better? We were tring to keep the countertop and did consider this.

No. The counter is THE issue. Now, if you want desperately to work around it, that can happen. With extra lighting, different colors, and a different tile.

But the kitchen will be an entirely different vibe from the bright and cheerful one that you put together with the yellow cabinets and happy tile. It can be earthy and natural. But it won’t be especially bright without adding a lot of light.

What does the rest of the home look like? What are the colors there?

To clarify, you are getting new cabinets but you currently have the brown Cambria countertop?

I am really biased against yellow and brown combinations because they seem so...biological. A yellow cabinet like that would be great with the painted tile. and a white or blue countertop.

That countertop will force you into workarounds that will never quite work or make you happy with the kitchen. Why not have a kitchen that does make you happy every time you walk into it, and greeting you first thing in the morning? I love LOVE that tile. That is the thing that all the other elements should work off of. Tell your husband (if he is the one who is insisting on the counter) that the counter will remind him of the exact color of caca after a meal of corn on the cob--he won't be able to get that out of his mind haha. After he's, um, digested that idea, remind him there will be many square feet of it all around. Check!

If you already own the counter (how, without an installer?), can you sell it on Craig's List, or give it to a charity like Habitat for Humanity and get a tax deduction?

Sophie, I almost always love your expert eye for color, but that combo you posted with the green is bilious. Or was that the point?

Here are your cabinets and tile with Cambria Bala Blue and Cambria Whitehall. Silestone White Zeus Extreme would be a purer white.

That brown is not going to work with Anything but more brown.

You are so on point. The happy yellow cabinets and tile, even the current painting does not match ths countertop. I do feel desperate. Could you point me in the direction of earthy and natural appropriate for a 1926 craftsman with white woodwork? Front room is olive green,white coffered ceilings, den is mustard colored, almost the color of the kitchen cabinets in the adjoining room. Perhaps I haven't given earthy and natural enough of a try. What would it look like?

What? Avocado green, coppertone brown, and burnt orange doesn’t work?

The counters would look great with wood cabinets.

kellymcneely-

You are welcome, but please, thank Sophie Wheeler!

She is the one that suggested the counter and the colors.

Look how clever she is, she even anticipated your kitchen art!

(And I'll take this opportunity to thank you myself Sophie Wheeler, I have learned so much from you since coming on to Houzz!)

And with all due respect, no liver counters if you can afford to replace them.

If you can't, well, then tell us right now and other suggestions can be made by people way smarter than I.

The only thing I can think of is huge thick slabs of wood with rubber bumper bottoms to cover your counters so that you will have in a sense, butcher block counters.

You could probably get them made with edges to come down to cover the edges of your counter but that will cost a lot more, and I don't think it's worth it. Save your money to replace your counters.

Hey, here's an idea-

Can you remove your kitchen counters very carefully and move them into your garage for your husband's workshop? They are smooth, a great surface for gluing. they have a straight surface, great for a T-square. He can share the counter material with his brothers, buddies, etc.

He might be more amenable if he sees a use for them once they are removed.

There is no fancy cracker that could make me like pâté.

Exactly, a wood cabinet would go great. And that photo captures it all. What fond memories.

I think these painted colors from Decora would work with a decorative tile backsplash in Talavera or Santa Barbara style tiles:

A more earthy palette with Decora Sweet Pea on the right comparing the two greens. It could work but this starts to get darker

This tile is expensive but you are saving on the counter if you keep it. Or perhaps you could mix it with plain field tile

https://www.fireclaytile.com/handpainted/classic-cuerda-seca/

What exactly exists now? And how do you have counters, but not cabinets? The order of operations seems to be pretty backwards here.

Thank you palimpsest. These are beautiful tiles perhaps you won't notice the countertops. Sophie, your insights are so valuable to us. I wasn't very clear. The cabinets exists and so does the countertop but they do not have to go together. My cabinets are yellow . See below.

okay, I am lost.

Is it that you already have cabinets, upper and lower, and the counters, but you just haven't installed anything?

What exactly is already installed, and what isn't installed?

There are no counters on those cabinets. I’m even more confused as to how the counters could exist, when it appears that they do not exist in the kitchen.

Love the tiles, LOVE the painting. Happy, bright, cheerful!!!

Makes me think of Carl Larsson's Swedish house

The counter, not so much. Craigslist it for whatever you can get and put in bare plywood sheets covered with vinyl tablecloth yardage for counters if you have to.

I am also confused as to what you have and what you don't have.

Do you just have the raw material for the countertops or used countertops?

Goodness, I need new glasses!

If the counters aren't yet installed, oh please, can't you find another use for them, like in your husband's workshop?

Can you try to sell them?

Can tell your husband you'll take in laundry to pay for new counters?

All right, I wasn't being serious about the laundry.

But now that I know you aren't losing the the money on demolition and the money you would have already paid for counter installation, this isn't unsalvagable.

Can you promise to forego vacations and birthday and Christmas presents for so many years in lieu of different counters?

His favorite cookies every week for a year?

ok, I don't want to get too specific now......

Dislike the tile and counter! What style are you going for?

We are remodeling the kitchen and cabinets are all removed, uppers and lowers. Counters are a frebbie from a friend 3cm. Right now we are inclined to put the cambria in the laundry room with wooden cabinets and get new white counters. I never could be convinced that cambria would go with yellow cabinets. The yellow tile is cute and airy but for sure we need to get white counters. Thanks

Counters from someone else’s house won’t fit your house. The fabrications costs will be almost as much as new. Donate those poopy brown counters to Habitat, and get what works for your space.

"Counters are a frebbie from a friend"

Ahh, all is now clear - the "friend" couldn't find anyone to like or want the liver counters and so, s/he "gifted" them to you. Now the counters are your burden, not his/hers. Not really "free", are they? You are twisting yourself into pretzels about those counters. Sell them on Craig's List.

omg, you didn't even pay for your brown counters?

Is hubby going to cut them himself, too?

If so, or his brother or a relative is doing this for free, heck, if you have to use them, put them in the garage for your husband's workshop, and put them in the laundry room for a folding area and where you won't care (I promise you won't care) if you spill Clorox on them, and for a craft table if you are going to make one, it will be a great flat space for laying out fabric.

Please get the white counters.

If hubby doesn't like your original patterned tile, you can select a different tile.

But oh no, not the liver counters in the kitchen!

The cambria is a slab, not yet fabricated but perfect for the laundry room. We are remodeling there as well. Thanks everyone for your help. It is best to get what works in each area. I can't see anything but white counters in the kitchen. The laundry will get more of an upgrade than I intended but it will look great with the redwood sauna back there. In fact perfect. So, I am really delighted with that outcome. It will also make the room look so warm and inviting when you step out of the sauna.

Loobab the slab is really beautiful and will look great in the laundry room with the redwood we have back in the sauna. My husband liked the yellow tile.

Glad you've figured out what to do.

Please don't forget to put up a photo of your finished kitchen!

I am not sure that I will post the finshed kitchen but I sure am glad for all the feedback. There is no way those liver brown (hey somewhat pretty counters) belonged in the kitchen. I wanted a more classic look to go with the decora shaker cabinets. I told my husband if he posted that look on Houzz he'd get honest feedback. I also told him nothing could possibly bring those two pieces together, not in a million years. Certainly, his attempt at the yellow tile was really really terrible. So I told him to post and see how people would respond. I am so grateful. Thanks!

Aw, don't be afraid to show the finished product, just take your husband's dirty socks off the counter :)

If we don't like it, we'll be sure to think it's his fault.

My artist husband does not think i have been fair to his idea of trading for this cambria. He wants to create a dramatic mood for it not cheerful like me. The center piece would be one of our friends paintings which i love. He would use dark brown glass tiles , dark cream white on walls with a tan in the coffered ceiling boxes. High gloss white in wood trim. We have a great yellow pine handmade table and chairs. Does this change anybodies mind as to the liver cambria. I am not sure i want a chapel atmosphere in my kitchen. We live outside Houston and he loves the Rothko chapel that is what i feel with this.

I suggest you tell him that yes, the kitchen is a chapel, and you are the high priestess, and since you do most of the grunt work you get to dictate the decor.

On another note, that painting is nice, and goes with the colors of the rest of the house, and if you get all your kitchen choices, hubby gets to decide where he would like to put it.

And do you know that the paintings in the Rothko chapel are merely shades of black, is your husband kidding??????

Yeah, yeah, minimalism, blah, blah.

Has he read The Emperor's new Clothes?

Let him decorate his studio with liver if he wants to. But behind closed doors.

There is often a difference between fine art and design, and sometimes artists may have a fine artistic sense but not so much design sense.

My house was owned by an artist and although it's small there were intense color combinations that would have made interesting paintings but not so much decor:

Yield sign yellow with blue trim.

Grey blue with cherry red trim.

Lemon yellow and olive green

Periwinkle front door, black trim in the bathroom that had yellow tile. Different paint colors in the closets of the above rooms.(A pepto bismol color somewhere)

When they "neutralized" the house for resale, she chose a pinkish khaki for the entire house with a trim color that was supposed to match but didn't quite and a khaki carpet that was more green yellowish. So it looked like it had matched at somepoint but the furnace had deposited a thin layer of soot on the walls, because they were dirtier looking in their almost match to the carpet. She then painted the front door orange and one bathroom, the kitchen and the fireplace mantle a deeper gold tan. So almost one color covered everything with slight mismatches throughout. It was very depressing looking.

Moody, chapel kitchen with depressing art? (Is the lady on the floor dead? Or are they resting after a skinny dip?) Not. Yes, move the fugly brown into the laundry room if you must, but it will be yuck just about anywhere. Some things are worth exactly what you pay for them. See how free stuff is already botching your design. Do it all right the first time. Fresh white tops for the kitchen with the yellow cabs and the whimsical tile and light blue paint.

The most expensive thing that exists is the free item that comes with obligations. Like keeping your MIL’s ugly wedding present on your mantel. Like rearranging your entire modern design around the Victorian rosewood dining room set that your uncle couldn’t get anyone to buy, so gives it to you to “keep it in the family”. Like the cute free puppy from your irresponsible neighbor who ends up boarded at the vet for three weeks sick with parvovirus. Like “lending a hand” to your new neighbor moving in, and now she lives to borrow all the tools in your garage.

^^^ A corollary of the "There is no free lunch" dictum

She's trying to use the post to convince her husband that the tops won't work. Hopefully, he will see her point now with our input.

The erratic posts, the lack of consistency between them, the gift of a slab of Cambria (how?), the different photos and descriptions of the cabinets, have started my spidey-sense tingling.

Oh, cut her some slack.

I bet she is young and sweet and trying to convince her husband so she can get her hearts desire (those nice tiles.)

Every time she goes to him with what Houzzers say, he tells her, "Yeahbut...".

She then comes back to us with his Yeahbut arguments looking to us for ways to counter them.

I'm about to send her a copy of Lysistrata.

Sheesh.

I can certainly appreciate the beauty in what I'd consider a moody kitchen,

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but I'm not sure it'd make me want to cook. I don't think the materials your husband wants to use would make your kitchen moody either just an unsettling kind of eclectic. I love color so I think your yellow cabinets and backsplash could be wonderful together, I agree with others who recommend to ditch the liver spotted free counter for a butcher block or white countertop.

She or he who cooks the most gets the biggest vote on the kitchen, and certainly gets to veto ugly brown counters.

Personally, I wouldn't use them in my laundry room, either, when you could have perfectly good laminate there in any color you want for significantly less than the fabrication cost of the "free" quartz.

Not your exact kitchen of course, but just to give you an idea of the combinations...

Thank you so much crystalpea. We love color too, and sometimes mix too many patterns. Of course we have to think about what the rest of the house looks like as well. The kitchen wall is being expanded while the cabinets are down and a new backsplash, counter, and paint have to go up.

Embracing a simple white counter and plain off white tile will compliment the kitchen. We have a tendency to see white as boring but sometimes it is necessary. We are ditching the counter and the tile in the kitchen. I've got to get the counter before I choose the tile. It will probably be all white quartz, very simple. And very simple white tile. Thanks, again for the photos.

No problem! I think you can still have a fun backsplash if you plan to go plain white with the countertop! I agree with waiting to decide on backsplash until everything else is in place.