Remember the BackSplash Ficasso

For those of you who have followed my blog journey, you know I love adding a video to speak to our experience.  This video is not only entertaining, but it also represents my DH's home town and the music he loves in the Washington, DC metro area; plus the first two lines of the song speaks to when we home owners get to make a decision about a project to KEEP WHAT YOU GOT UNTIL YOU HAVE WHAT YOU NEED TO GET THE PROJECT DONE.  My waiting paid off and I am so happy what a difference it makes in our kitchen.  Much, Much thanks for my husband. :-)

***PLEASE JOIN ME AND WATCH THE VIDEO BECAUSE I AM SO TICKLED TO GET WHAT I NEED AND WANTED FOR OUR KITCHEN**

Do you remember the backsplash that I picked out for our kitchen that horrified me beyond my imagination?  So some of you do and some of you will get to see what I was so horrified about during the process.  I knew I wanted a subway tile pattern with the travertine stone.  I had two choices that RH offered which were a gold tone and a ivory tone.  I was willing to take my first interior design risk and go for the gold tone hoping it would pop even though my granite counter top was not pre-selected nor could I pre-select it.  Well, when the backsplash was installed I nearly flipped my lid because it was a total eye sore to me.  However, the rep at M&R floors, our sales representative and project management  thought it was a good fit and suggested that it would grow on me given time.  Well, I became accustomed to looking at it and chose a color palette to work perfectly with the colors to mute it.  The back splash and the granite had the exact same colors which looked pretty in one sense because they matched, BUT the gold was over powering the granite.  So I put out my post and received several suggestions; however, I picked the solution that would make me the happiest and that was to rip it out and change the color to the neutral pattern and I LOVE IT!  It makes the kitchen feel lighter and brighter.  The gold felt heavy and like a burden every time I looked at it.

Before
You can see how closely the colors are the same; however, both are t0o busy and a total eyesore.

Part of the concern was damaging the walls.
Well, this guy started out cracking each individual stone and finally figured to just rip sections at a time.
Smart Choice or he would have been there all day.

All the stone and drywall ripped out completely.
Sweet. Now we have a clean slate.
The adhesive that was used for the original install was very strong and the dry wall was pulling apart which some blogger's mentioned as a potential problem.  I preferred for it to be ripped out because I did not want them to patch up spots leaving the wall uneven.

AFTER 

It feels so much lighter and now my kitchen has the right formula for color palette success:
light, medium and dark.

Notice that we put cast stone outlet and switch plates to match the backsplash stone.

Here is my light (backsplash/cabinets), medium (granite counter top), and dark (espresso floors)!

Sorry, bad photo.
This picture is distorted so you really can't see the beauty of the two combinations.
But it looks great in person or a better photo.

Oops, another blurry picture!
Oh well, but you can see the difference from this angle with our double wall ovens
leading out to the dining room and foyer.