Oh... But, I LIKE IT! (what are your dimensions?)

I'm sorry he thinks he is done, and I hope it was a tongue in cheek comment. Hopefully you can call him back to do your list of items if he really did think he was done for now.

It is beautiful! Soooo, what BS are you using - have you decided? What is the name of your granite?

Looking good! I am anxiously waiting to hear how the install of your trash door opener goes, weren't you putting in the Ikea Utrasta electric hands free thing? I thought I'd wait to hear how yours went before ordering one. Sounds like they are a pain to install.

I was close to picking a very similar granite, is yours leathered or honed? And I so hear you, I just want my house back and strangers out of it - but there is so much left to do, and in some cases redo, ugh! The clean up is never ending.

Maybe there is a method to his madness. I can see not wanting to put the door pulls on (the lowers anyway) until after the backsplash is in as they would likely be in the way. It seems like our undercab lighting went in after the backsplash, too, so there could be a reason he is waiting to do that electrical. Ditto for the toe kick ... looks like you have things protecting the floor that would prevent the toe kick from going in. If it were me, I'd cover the fronts of those lowers with cardboard so that there wasn't a chance of the workers dinging them while they install the splash, cabinet lighting, etc. It's looking great so far!

Looks really good so far! Love the wood on the cabinets… what is it? What's hiding under the cardboard?

I'm very interested in this thread because I'm pretty much where you are and your cabinets and granite are very similar to my kitchen. What color pulls do you plan on? I was so torn between brushed nickel and black. I chose brushed nickel, but still wonder if black would look better. I'm going to wait until it's all finished and decide if I still want to change them.

I'm no help with the GC issue but really gorgeous cabinets & granite-- very nice!

Your countertop & cabinet combination is absolutely gorgeous.
At least he let you wait until the tops are in before choosing a backsplash. I was the first client my KD had that did not pick out & order a backsplash before the counters were installed. I knew she was so sick of hearing about GW that I didn't tell her about the ABB club. They, too, were going to wait until after the BS install to finish electrical & lighting. We had a couple of delays (3 months) with the tile. I eventually had a meltdown and they took pity on me & did the lighting.
It was good motivation but I took the time I needed to find the right tile.

kirkhall - thank you! Our dimensions are 12'9"x20'3 (give or take an inch on this dimension...I'm going off the top of my head on that). We have narrow aisles, but truthfully, I've worked in much more cramped kitchens and since I'm short (5'3"), the layout in my very limited usage has felt "right".
Sadly, it wasn't a tongue-in-cheek comment. He means it. I mentioned the things that I felt should be done sooner than later. And he said it would be after tile.

Autumn - thank you also. Our granite is called "Diamonds" - it's leathered and it has the best texture. It's hard to see in photos, but the textural part of it is very appealing to me. I've always been a "texture" person.
We know (we think!) what we want for tile - we know we want glass, we like the long lines, and we like the ones that are partially gloss and partially matte, at this point, it's more a matter of color
Our shortlist is:
AKDO Stagger in Parchment: http://www.akdo.com/products_detail_coll.asp?pid=4905&collid=108&subcollid
Artistic Tile Stilato in Pavarotti Pearl http://artistictile.com/itemdetails.aspx?Pid=297&Cid=23&Colid=61&Mname=Pavarotti%20Pearl
BestTile Origami in Shell http://www.besttile.com/uploads/images/Product%20Images/Glass/Organic/259952_origami_shell.jpg
OOTM_Mom - You remembered correctly, we are doing the Utrusta. We're partially there in that the GC has opened the box, looked at the instructions (which he complained about a bit because they are the typical IKEA instructions - haha) and has placed the sensors. But apparently the electricity part of it...not gonna happen until after tile. Even though the tile is no where near the island. No electricity for us.
The granite we got is leathered. I LOVE the texture both in looks and feel. Honestly when it was vertical when we picked it at the fabricator, the texture didn't show as much - it was more a feel and that it wasn't shiny everywhere. Now that it's horizontal...you pick up the texture so much more. I really am glad we got a leathered finish, at least so far. I'm wondering how it's going to be with cleaning, but I'm hoping it won't be bad. I've attached a picture that hopefully helps to show a little bit of the texture.
jellytoast - I've said that about this project many times. I've come to the conclusion though that in most cases, there really isn't method. It's just madness. We have the hard board down because they destroy the floors otherwise. It can (and has been) pulled up and put down when needed. It can move, no problem, so that the toekick pieces can be installed.
We've already had several times of them scratching the cabinets. It's been frustrating. I feel like putting the cabinets in bubble wrap. My DH and I are very careful with our things and this isn't a cheap project for us...we really would like it to not get all scratched and dinged, and broken before it's ever officially "done new"
Carol - the cabinets are vertical grain-matched cherry veneer. Our flooring is partially 65 yr. old red oak and then new red oak fingered in to try to match as best as we could. We haven't seen it much since it went in around the end of last year as it has been covered by rosin paper and hardboard most of the time. We're looking forward to seeing it again some time soon. We went for a lower contrast look, so in spite of design/decorator rules, our floor is relatively close in tone to our cabinets.
LindaNew - your kitchen is looking lovely. We are going with a bit of a contemporary-ish look and going with the simple stainless steel Euro-style pulls. I brought home several different options for my DH to look over, and those were his favorite of the group. We are mixing it up in terms of metals - our appliances are stainless as will be our pulls. Our lighting is a mix of chrome (it was all the pendants came in) and brushed nickel. Our faucet with be brushed nickel. We hope that it won't look too disjointed. For you, it looks like your pendants are black...I wonder if having the black for your pulls would work well to tie in together there.
Texasgal47 - thank you. I'm very much looking forward to it being completed so that we can just relax and enjoy it.

romy - Thank you, we really love it. Ha...make no mistake, the GC didn't "let" me wait...I told him this was the way things were going to be. We painted the ceiling before flooring and cabinets(because it made sense and we were doing just the very slightest shade of neutral off-white). He wanted to paint everything. I said that wouldn't work - it would happen at the end, after everything else. They wanted to put in tile before the granite. I told him there was NO WAY that was going to happen.

We've had several discussions about the "right" way to do things. The problem is...that our kitchen is very detail oriented. It is all about lines and details. And I don't think that our GC and the people that work for him are quite used to that. They are more used to someone saying, "I need this done, please do it." He should know better - it's not the first time we've worked with him. He knows that we are very concerned with details and things being done right.

As I think about it, the way he said that he was going to do our UC lighting, that needs to be done before tile is installed....must send out an email about that to find out what has changed in that regard. I'd really like to know why many of these things are waiting until after we have tile.

It sounds like an excuse to me. My tile was the absolute last thing to go in. A lot of people do their own backsplashes after they take possession on new builds. He's got another job to go to or something.

I can't imagine them wanting to tile before granite.

What does ABB stand for?

amberm145-ABB = all but backsplash

andreak-will check your links to tile later. I am finding that I *love* texture or layers of texture too. I think you can achieve so much with layers of texture for interest vs. layering more/different colors. It sort of a play on depth vs. colors competing for 'loudness'. I'm no decorator, that's just what I find myself drawn to.

Was there an additional cost to leather your granite or was it on display for sale that way? I like the mix of gloss and matte finish as well. :)

Tile? I hope they're planning on pulling the dishwasher and fridge to put something in underneath or that could cause big problems down the road.

The wait on the electrical for our GC was to have the electricians come in one day & finish everything, which I interpret to be a financial issue.

We've had that same list of "to dos" for some time now - I guess the GC doesn't want to get paid the money we owe him because we've told him we want to pay him, and will "as soon as its done". He's not using the backsplash as a excuse though. What's now left - toe kicks, one door (was supposed to be a pullout, but now isn't, so they have to figure out how to get the hinges into a very narrow already-installed cabinet), backsplash and under-cabinet lighting (the delays with the last two items being on us, not him).

Well, take solace in the fact that your kitchen is gorgeous and you'll love it for years once its done!

That is absurd. My kitchen has been complete for at least four years and I just ordered the tile for my backsplash a week ago.

Yeah, so the latest update...earlier this week, my DH gets a call while he's at work from the GC, basically yelling at him that we are holding up the project because we don't have tile!

We have a list of almost 40 things that still need to be done, with probably 3/4 of which can be easily completed before tile goes in.

The lead person on our project seems to be feeding the owner/GC a line and throwing us under the bus, so to speak. Needless to say, we're not happy. When I responded by email to give the GC our list, one of the things that I mentioned is that there have been MANY days that they haven't been here because the lead guy had to take off to watch his kids because they were sick, or his wife was sick, etc.

In the meantime, one of the things on the list is for the GC to measure so that we can BUY our tile to be installed...I can get rough measurements, but I want/expect them from them so that there's no confusion later on down the road. We haven't seen them since Monday and haven't talked with them since the GC yelled at my husband on Tuesday. Ah, life is good. :(

The worst of this is, the GC has done work for us previously - smaller, handyman type projects...but we selected him because he had done a good job for us in our smaller projects. We had used that as a bit of a testing ground and he has really good reviews on Angie's List...but it seems like they may be less detailed projects than what we have with our kitchen.