The counter and the backsplash can wait a bit, but I'd think the floor should have already been decided. If you use a product that has some height, like wood or tile, your cabinets need to be set at the same height. If your cabinets are set on the sub-floor, you'll pretty much be limited to low profile choices like linoleum or vinyl. What's your GC saying about this? There's a zillion Marmoleum choices, are you sure you didn't see something you liked? How about mixing and matching Marmoleum squares? I have a biologist friend who ran a double helix down the length of her galley kitchen. So cool.

Your countertop is one of the last things to go in. It's important that it goes with your new cabinets and floor. You should not choose on faith - it's just too expensive. As soon as some cabinets are in, bring your samples into your space and see what they look like in place. Lighting makes a big difference. When that decision is made, then you can focus on a backsplash. You could always go with a 4" piece of your quartz and paint above that. It's not a popular choice at the moment, but it may work with your set-up. If you want something else, this gets personal. What do you like? Go to the tile store and see what's available. Bring samples home. Go to Home Depot and buy samples, retuning those that don't work. Again, lighting makes a huge difference.

I agree that it can be difficult to figure out all the steps! I really think having an overall vision for the space before you make any final choices is best. Yes, you can wait to choose your backsplash till last, but doesn't it make more sense to at least know the overall style / color scheme it should be? At least you should have a few samples that you are deciding between.

Same with the counters. You should already know what direction you want to go, and then it's a matter having samples of a few tops to compare to your cabs.

Overall, what I'm saying is that these things should be decided ahead of time, with allowing for some minor tweaks as things get placed.

As for the flooring, I think it's a mistake to completely write off wood because of water. If that's not what you want looks wise, that's fine. But wood is a perfectly acceptable and even desirable flooring material for a kitchen.

Pick from the items with the least selection (appliances) to those with the most (paint colors). This way your choices are always expanding instead of narrowing. Don't show up at your fabricator's showroom trying to match a wall covering sample to a stone.

I'm a believer in finding your counter before your floor. I see so many people being told that their beloved slab doesn't go with the floor they just had installed.

I like the look of slate too, but I wanted the ease of luxury vinyl. We got Cortec Petrified Forest. It's a bluey gray with browns in it. Love it with our cherry cabinets. And I'm glad we didn't go with wood or laminate, as our freezer has had leaking issues. (Not a new freezer.). The floor is so much more comfortable than our old tile floor. I'd never go back to tile.

Our order was 1. Cabinets 2. Counter 3. Floor 4. Backsplash 5. Pulls. We have a mostly open concept, so we stuck with the paint colors already in the room.

This post was edited by joygreenwald on Fri, Nov 7, 14 at 10:20

For an open concept home, or a home designed as a whole piece, the floor is the first choice, before anything else. It's the hardest to change out later, and it unifies the whole space.

Perhaps you need to consult with a desgner to help you to pull things together. It's money well spent.

As you can tell from the previous posts, there's more than one way to plan your attack. I prefer to have everything selected in advance but it didn't work out that way this time. I think the floor selection should be decided early on. I prefer the floor to go down before the cabs are installed (have done both ways). I went with the cork flooring; despite the zillions of stain choices, we came up with our own color and to be honest, it's dark, you can only tell its cork when looking closely. The cork works for our old bones; my neighbor with toddlers also interested in product.

I got the soapstone countertops I wanted, but the color wasn't exactly as I had envisioned. I really liked the soapstone that caught my eye, so I'm re-thinking other previous decisions (backsplash tile, etc). Maybe I'm the only one who has a hard time making 'permanent' decisions and changing my mind is common. ;-). Treb's advice sounds so logical, I just couldn't get it to work in my project ;-). For example, wall paint color sounds like a great idea to hold off till near the end. Unfortunately my contractor painted fairly early on in his process (before cab install).

Lighting is critical and should be considered for nearly every item going into kitchen. Once the lighting changes were made during early structural stage, I bought several bulbs with diff color tones to see which worked best with the limited natural light, etc. etc. Everything I viewed for the kitchen was done under the lighting tones.

I guess I'm just trying to say, whichever early decisions you make, be open to changes of other decisions down the road. Being flexible is key. You're at an exciting stage right now...enjoy it all. Good luck.

You need to look at everything at once. Everything. Floors, cabs, counter and backsplash. No designer in the world ever has you buy a key fabric for your living room, make pillows with it and then say,"I wonder what kind of couch we should get?"

Make mood boards. Swipe pics of different stones and tiles and lighting and doors, and arrange them into little displays in Olioboard or PowerPoint or Word. Start wide, with everything you like, then get progressively more ruthless in eliminating things that don't work with your other picks. Once you have it narrowed down, get real live samples. Keep being ruthless.

When it's time to commit, then you have to go in order of narrowest availability to broadest. Wait to actually order your backsplash because your selections may look different after floors and counters are in place (but of course you already have picked a short list of options!). Paint always comes last because it comes in infinite colors.

Google gardenweb design around this. You'll see good examples of how it's done.

We looked at floors and cabinets sort of simultaneously...I knew what I wanted in terms of an overall look.
We shopped around for cabinets and looked at pictures for inspiration (I'm addicted to Houzz). Picked out our cabinets and floors then took samples of both to granite yards until we found our perfect slabs.
We looked at granite for quite a while and I found my tastes evolved over the process.
(We also shopped for appliances in there as well)
I let my husband figure out the lighting - he's an electrican...but I also looked through pictures to show him what I wanted and shopped for the trim I wanted on the downlights - we're not doing fixtures...he also figured out all the under cab lighting.

I've looked at backsplashes and inspiration pics but am not choosing anything until the rest of the components are in (which may be NEVER at this rate lol!!) At that time, I'll choose paint as well.

Since you've already chosen your cabinets, you should decide on your floor. Then you can make a good countertop selection. A quick note-you mention quartz countertops. Do you mean engineered quartz? Sometimes the EQ choice is backordered (I'm potentially facing this now-ugh, will know later today). You already have your kitchen gutted it sounds like, so when you do make a countertop choice, have a backup in mind (it can't hurt at least) so you aren't delayed further if your first choice won't be available for months. And as others mentioned pull pics from Houzz, and other sites, of things that catch your eye. Make a folder of them. Don't think about each picture at first, if you like it, put it in. Then once you have a lot of pictures, go through them and figure out what about each one inspired you. It could be a light fixture, the paint, the overall look, cabinet style, practically anything. That will help you narrow in on what you want your kitchen to look like as you find trends in what you liked about the whole set of pictures.