oh my....

When I had my painting fiasco a few weeks ago (where what should have been a 2 day job turned into a week long nightmare), I used some of the extra orangey-brown paint on one section of the kitchen wall. Yes, just one section. The backsplash area behind the stove was absolutely atrocious and no amount of cleaning was helping, so it went from white to dark. When I pulled the tape away from the outlets and wall edges, it also pulled some of the tape away. :O(
I've briefly looked at the tiles in Lowe's, quickly trashed the advertisements claiming tile is out and tin is in (not for my kitchen!!!) and even briefly entertained the thought of painting something on paper for directly over the stove, covering it with Plexiglas, and then just touching up all the edges with the dark paint. But while we were at the Southern Home Shows, I saw these custom tiles a family makes. The husband creates the ceramic tiles, the wife paints them, then he refires them to finish them. Of course, custom tiles aren't cheap. I looked online at other companies, and the more I saw the more ideas I had. I might still check out wall paper murals, though Bobby's not crazy about anything behind the stove that could be a fire hazard (such as a painting, etc).

They had many tiles like this one. They also had pigs, cows, horses, and just about anything you could imagine.

This is one of their larger works that is embossed (where parts stand out like a sculpture). They had a whole section on display at the show that were small tiles of the vegetables only. (One 4" tile would be a yellow bell pepper, one would be a tomato, two would make up a carrot, or corn, etc). But if you're putting them together, she can do a display such as the one above.

These two I found online by two other companies. While I love the historic kitchen one, (and the brown baskets would match the brown wall on the sides), I think it might be a bit much. And I LOVE the realistic painting of the tomatoes.

Realistically, unless I buy tiles at Lowe's and paint them myself (which wouldn't look anywhere as lovely as these), it will be several years down the road before this home project could be accomplished. I get to fill in at my old job 2 days a week for a few weeks this next month, and a small part of me would love to put that income towards this project, but my head reminds me there are other priorities demanding it. Maybe by the time I finally decide what I want, it'll be time to start!