I do think a vision evolves over time and when you see one element installed it triggers a better option for the next that's why when I read a dilemma on here and someone is choosing absolutely everything before a project starts I wonder how the end product turns out.

I'm glad you went with navy (not gray, so sick of everyone cloning their choices) they must be beautiful. I think you would have been unhappy with yellow grout though.

Post some pictures of your project

Enjoy

My plan is always evolving. It changes due to cost, availability of items, etc. Your space will look fabulous. The more it develops the better it will become. These minor stumbling blocks just open the door for bigger and better possibilities that you haven't even thought of yet.

Come in from the ledge! .

The answer to your question is yes, second guessing is common. More than it ever used to be as folks search every image all over the internet, yank pieces and parts and actually screw up big time. Simply because they can not stop LOOKING.

AS To "missing out"There is a fine line to be drawn. Of course you miss out! That's the very nature of design. You simply can't have everything, one choice will negate another and the selections actually NARROW, the deeper into the selection process you go. !! That is true no matter how much time and money you have.

Design is editing. The words are actually synonyms.......: )

Why don't you post the layout, and your selections? A kitchen begins with layout, function . They are appliance driven....You need electrical, plumbing.i

Then it is cabinet selection, flooring, counters. .

A backsplash is DEAD LAST : )......and why yellow grout ?

Post your inspo kitchen too...........

Hale navy pantry...white kitchen

Kitchen redo with butler · More Info

Kitchen redo with butler · More Info

Kitchen redo with butler · More Info

I would like to know the name of the stone you were originally going to get, and the name of the stone you ended up getting. I read your whole OP thinking in the next line you will tell us. If you would tell us, perhaps we can give more specific input on your choices.

I always puffy heart you Friday!

haha yellow grout because..it's not white or gray or black, it's my favorite color, and I thought it would be fun. Probably now it will be just painted wall, and we'll put a stainless sheet behind the stove. I can find other ways for color and fun. I'm fun by nature ha!

Appliances will be stainless. Let me see where I can find pictures of what we have now, and the layout..they're on here somewhere, but I don't know if I can save pictures from here. The kitchen and dining area are basically one big room, just offset from one another a few feet. The "pantry" (for lack of a better term-butler's pantry maybe) is part of the attached garage. It's like 11'x5' or so, with an open door way and step down, and a pass thru window. We've got the floor in the pantry, and that will be the same floor thru the whole house.

I wouldn't have even questioned most of this, but for the counter. I "don't like" swirly stone counters, real or laminate-so I never bothered to look at those, and wouldn't have...but for that counter that randomly made my heart jump. I bypassed all the things I don't like, when figuring out what I wanted to do, was content w/my choices/decisions, figuring some things out as we came to them...and then that dumb counter made the RRR--RRRT record noise. Never thought I was "missing out" on anything--until then.

I guess from your most recent response you’d prefer to keep those choices personal and confidential. I understand.

Nope, I'm about the least personal and confidential person on the planet. I posted with pics from my phone a minute ago..maybe Houzz ate it? We're doing laminate, and I'd originally chosen a white w/faint greige'ish cross hatching. Then I randomly found a poster's quartzite that for whatever reason really struck me. We looked again and I found River Gold Formica..which is what we ordered. I did find layout pictures on here but I can't save them. Let me look again for the other ones.

Try again..

Pantry as of last week. Dads proud as you can see. 11x7, my mistake earlier.

Big River Gold sample.

I chuckled when you said “It will look like I am pretending”. I’m nearly finished with our renovation and I started wanting a stylish modern kitchen (because I wanted to be seen as young, modern and stylish in my taste—though I am far from that.) As our reno continued my choices became more and more conservative and I ended up with a ‘country kitchen‘.

What began the ‘decent‘ in to country was such a seemingly insignificant decision— picking the feet on the cabinets. There was a misunderstanding on the order and I just kept the order they sent. So I was trying to pretend I was one person in the beginning but in the end my true self one out. Oh, well....😊

I hear you loud and clear on this right now.

Two weeks ago we had Glacier White Corian installed in our kitchen. We’d been planning on this for about 8-9 months and were really confident in what we wanted. After it was installed, I felt really pleased with it. 48 hours went by and someone started a thread here about how her quartzite counters and cabinets looked awful together. I decided to read the thread because my heart went out to someone who had invested so much and was unhappy with the results.

Really bad move on my part. I flat out fell in love with her counters and if I had seen them a month earlier, I would have searched high and low for something similar. All of a sudden my counters seemed like a safe, sensible choice while hers seemed like the stuff of dreams.

It took me a few days of wallowing in my jealousy, but I am back to loving my perfectly fine counters and have moved past any regret. All that to say that I think that you’ll be fine with whatever you decide, but that if you’ve found something that makes your heart jump, it’s probably worth really considering.

I am having a hard time with the whole.....there is something better just around the corner thing.

NO THERE IS NOT!!!!!! This is not rocket science. Either you love it or you don't. If you are second guessing yourself, then, IMHO, you do not love your choices.

FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL HELP YOU FIND YOUR VOICE. Then make a decision and then walk away. Don't keep looking....why??? The choices are made. Move on.

If you have a vision of how you want the finished product to look, then do that vision.

When I renovated my kitchen, I spent years cutting out pictures of kitchens I liked, did not like, and why for both. When it came time to renovate the kitchen, almost every single picture was a white kitchen. They absolutely took my breath away. So, with some advice from my sister, my husband and my son, I now have the kitchen of my dreams. They looked at my pictures and helped me find my voice. Are there other countertops that are "prettier", of course. But, they are not the countertops of my vision.

That is why I always say, before any renovation and especially before you swing a hammer, have all of your decisions made (okay, maybe not exact paint color or backsplash, except I knew I wanted white subway tile) and have all of your products on hand, except your countertops, which are measured on site after the cabinets are installed.

Once you have made your choices.....STOP LOOKING. Or else the choices are not the right ones, in which case, stop renovating.

I think your new choice will be smashing.

following

We’re still in the construction phase, but our design has definitely had to evolve based on construction issues, design limitations, budget limitations, etc. I always manage to get excited about the evolution, mostly because there are so many variations I could be happy with! I really like your new selections, and while I can definitely appreciate the bold yellow grout vision, I prefer the bold counter :)

I think it's just human nature to second guess yourself, especially when you're spending so much time, effort, and MONEY on a large project like a kitchen. Unless of course you're one of those people who makes decisions really quickly and doesn't look back. Like my husband. To make it worse, as a designer I'm my own worst client :(

I wanted white. Went to the cabinet guy and fell in love with a beautiful nautical blue. ( was way ahead of my time. This was six years ago.). Did some research and found that stained cabinets have better wear. Painted cabinets could chip over time. So we went with a stained maple that nearly matched our inspiration piece, a beautiful china hutch in stained maple.

I wanted a colored silestone. Green tea, maybe. Carried the sample with me for a year. Ended up with Cambria Windermere because it has movement and looked fabulous with our stained maple cabinets.

What we got was nothing like what I’d been planning, but it’s classic, beautiful, hard working and suits the antique house.

Yes, I’ve changed my mind a time or two.

“Look, a squirrel!” needs to fit into a master plan. A good master plan framework has room for lots of right choices in each category. Graph it out in a relationship tree if if X then Y type of diagram. Your choice fits into a “light counter” category. It just provides pattern, and now becomes an “If a patterned counter, then virtually patternless other adjacent choices” becomes the direction. That doesn’t mean that the overall master plan changes. A white tile with that counter will still work.

What no plan has room for ever is yellow grout. Not even in a nursery bathroom. Sorry, not sorry. This is a huge blessing in disguise if it saved you from that squirrel sighting. Paint the walls or ceiling a soft yellow. People forget the ceiling is a wall too. A soft glow of a yellow ceiling is actually very psychologically boosting when contrasted with white trim. SW Daybreak. Subtle, soft, and brain empowering.

Missi and Diana, I think I may be one of those that makes a decision and does not look back.

Are there others that may give me a reaction? Maybe. But, I am happy enough and confident enough with my decision, that, although I may see something that makes me say WOW, I have enough wherewith-all to know the decisions I have made are the best ones and I move on.

I think second guessing is common for anything that requires a big decision that’s not easily changed later. If you’ve had a vision for a long time, and it hasn’t constantly changed, it’s likely you’ll be happy with it in the long run!

I don't know that I'd have been so "oofda did I just totally veer off into who knows where" if I hadn't been so adamant, dead set, no way no how, I do not like them Sam I am, about anything other than plain/simple counters. Like never ever ever am I cutting off more than a half inch of my long hair, short hair on girls doesn't look good, and then coming home w/a pixie cut b/c it just spoke to you.

My husband, before he had Lasik, would need knew glasses, go in, pick two, try them on, I'll take these, and that's it. It soooo does not work like that w/me. It's a process (Partially b/c I find it great fun to try on all kinds of different glasses b/c it's like face jewelry)..and the last three times I've chosen glasses, have been ones that my husband didn't like-one pair in fact he *detested* but I loved them.

It's just confusing, I guess, and maybe it's just me, to be so confident in what I wanted, and so adamant about what I *didn't* want, to have my head turned, and to have it turned such that it was an immediate reaction that threw me into the direction I "knew" I had no interest in. Not just a "wow, that's super pretty, I really like that", it was a gutteral reaction.

Argh why the dislike of yellow grout?? Nobody else thinks it sounds pretty and fun? Walls are going to be Agreeable Gray...if I thought I could get away w/some sort of yellow on the ceiling I'd be all over it.

Thor-A good house is never done..so hell our house is spectacular b/c we've been working on the dumb thing for 18 years hahahahaha!

Missi
I also 2nd guessed my choice on our island granite, so l went back to the yard were I had chosen it from and had another look, you can check out our build on my page under idea books new build Gabe.
once I confirmed it was more of a cream vs a WHITE, we went with it . As I had changed the colors on the maple cabinets 2x before settling as as you stayed, I didn't LOVE it , so am glad that I did go back to confirm the granite & the cabinets.

Missi
Am referring to the cabinets stain/ colors that I really did not love first choices

Today I put aside the backsplash tile samples that I have loved forever* and brought home new samples that are about 100% in a different direction. I don’t know what I’m doing or who I am anymore.

*there is a real concern that our kitchen is too white and that this particular backsplash would only add to that.

I think you'll love you choices once they are in. I can't wait to see them.

Jemima do you have a thread? I like looking at backsplashes!

I love the counters. But I don't know that I love the counter and wall color together. I'm *hoping* it's b/c the bulbs in the lights are too warm/yellow. Or I guess I chose something wrong between the two. Or I'm totally imagining it, but it's really bothering me. I want to photoshop the counter to white and see if that's better.

Please tell me you are going to put polished brass pulls or knobs on those cabinets!

That's the plan, Stan! I have a thread floating around somewhere trying to decide which ones.