Kitchen Time! -- Updated

First of all, sorry about the lack of posting yesterday. Lame. No excuse.

Secondly, when hubs and I were making selections for our new house, we had NO IDEA if we'd like what the finished product would look like on the outside. We selected our colors and crossed our fingers and, thankfully, we loved the way it turned out. Yay! I had asked our Sales Agent on several occasions if she could find me an existing home with our siding color, or our brick color, or our shutter color, and alas, she was never able to find any combination of any of our selections on any of their homes in our entire county. Shocking, right? Apparently Ryan makes changes to their colors, options, vendors, etc. rather frequently so our siding color, for example, had only been an available option for a few months prior to our selections, and no one happened to have chosen it so we could see it "live" and in person. No biggie.

Except it was a biggie.

I needed to see it. So I created a mock-up of it myself, as you've seen here before:

It wasn't fancy, it wasn't perfect, but it got the job done and allowed me to visualize our color selections before they came to fruition. Cool. So now? Now I'm in the same boat, only this time, it's with my kitchen. We've already made our cabinet, countertop and flooring selections, so those can't be changed (trust me -- I tried to get them to allow me to choose a different granite that they don't even technically offer, and got a big fat NO). So I'm fine with all of that. Now I'm trying to visualize what all of it will look like when it comes together. And this is no small feat. Apparently I lack imagination or something because I can't see a single cabinet front, a 4-inch square of granite and a 2-foot flooring sample and envision my new kitchen from it. Call me crazy.

So I took to my trusty MacBook and busted out a Photoshop representation of what my kitchen will look like. It's not my best work, but it's enough to help me see what I needed to see. Then I added the backsplash I'm currently contemplating. Then the drawer pulls. And before I knew it, I could See. MY. Kitchen. Wow! It's not perfect, but it's a decent 2-D conceptualization of what I should see coming together in reality over the next 6 weeks.

Like how I was sure to include my first new house purchase in my kitchen rendering? Haha!

Oh, and please be sure to imagine that there's cabinet crown moulding across the top, and that the backsplash is much more seamless than the one square sample I had to copy over and over.

I am completely smitten!

((UPDATE))


I had asked our granite installer over 2 weeks ago for a photo of the actual slab that is going to be used for our countertops since I've been VERY concerned about it. It's such a HUGE decision that will make such a HUGE impact in my kitchen, and I wanted to be sure I liked what they would use, or else I would fight like a crazy person to get what I wanted. I finally got the picture today and there are NO WORDS to express the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I opened the email. I almost literally threw up. Let me show you why.


Here are the samples I've found online of the Giallo Napoleon granite we selected. These examples look VERY similar to the 4x4 sample we made our selection from:

See how light the base color is, then it has the darker shades of espresso and some gold sprinkled about? Yes? I like it! That's why I chose it. Duh.


Here's the sample our granite guy sent me today of THE ACTUAL SLAB our countertops will be fabricated from:

Are you kidding me?!


PUH-LEAZE tell me you see what I see. Please tell me this slab looks absolutely NOTHING like the ones pictured above it.


I quickly threw in the actual sample to the kitchen mock-up I created. Behold:

How dark, dingy and dirty does that look??


I could literally die.


((END UPDATE))

Oh, and I didn't bother to do the other wall of the kitchen that has the sink, dishwasher, bar and additional countertops because, really, what would be the point?

So dare I ask? What do you think? Any specific thoughts on the backsplash? I really like this Tuscany one the best. I happened to see something very similar to this on the pilot episode of Smash in Debra Messing's character's kitchen, and I immediately scoured the web to find something as close as possible to it. This Tuscany is pretty durn close:

But a close second would be the Tao:

My only other thought, my original thought, was glass subway tiles, which are traditionally 3x6. However, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the idea of oversized subway tiles, like maybe 6x12, but I'm not sure such a thing exists.

I'm thinking white will look okay for the backsplash, even though there's not actually any white in the granite to technically match it to exactly.

Thoughts?? I'm listening... ;)