That usually happens with me, too, after a good workout day I gain a pound in water weight. Then I rest a day and the weight goes back down, and LaMa reminds me about water weight!
With your tile, can you put a deposit down and take all the tile and bring it to your house and play with it? If not, bring a sample of your flooring, your countertop, and your paint colors to the showroom along with the white tile and look at everything both in natural light and in the shop lighting. I love all your tile selections! I am partial to your first choice and bigger patterns in general, but the second choice would maybe look a little more formal and lovely, too. I would be a little nervous about the shiny black border without looking at it with all the materials because it might draw the attention away from the patterned tile and just be a very prominent black rectangle over the stove top. My best advice is to not let yourself get talked into anything! All the things I got talked into I have regretted in our remodel. Trust your instincts!
Your kitchen is amazing! You are going to have a blast cooking in such a gorgeous space!!! I really like the way they did the tile in the link I sent. I was picturing the square or rectangle of patterned tile in your backsplash of the stove (like the example you showed above) and wondered how that would look with the top cabinet with the arch. If I were going to put tile there in a rectangle, I might consider the top part of the rectangle to arch to match the arch in the cabinetry, which would be a lot of custom work with a border. I think I would take some chalk and draw on the wall there and see how a rectangle of patterned tile would look with the arched cabinetry above. Also I don't think the 2 different glazes (one more matte, one more shiny) would bother me with the white and patterned tile, but the shiny black border with the matte patterned tile might be too much. It would definitely be safer to match your white tile. I hope you can get all the tile together and play with it! If your second choice tile is a crackle glaze, the little crackles are hard to clean. We have turquoise crackle glaze plates and bowls, and I don't serve things like dishes with turmeric in them because the crackles pick up the stain. For that reason, put those dishes in the dishwasher instead of hand wash because if they can get stained, they can also hold in germs.
Our house is more California modern, so I am not the best person to ask about doing a more traditional/contemporary kitchen, but can you ask your tile person if they can't just add thicker backer board and/or more mortar to the thinner tile and match the thickness like that? It might be more in materials and labor, but if they can pull it off, I think it would look stunning! I worry that your tile guy is glacially slow. That along with how he estimated the other tile amounts wrong makes me think he isn't very experienced. So maybe he told you not to do 2 different thickness of tile because it is hard for someone who maybe isn't a master in the field yet? I just looked up how to install tile with 2 different thicknesses, and there is a great article on houzz
How to Match Tile Heights for a Perfect Installation . Maybe you would want to get a bid from a more experienced tile person just for the kitchen tile if your current guy isn't under contract for it already? Anyway, I am writing your ear off! I should just have said, "go with your instincts, and do not get talked into things, especially with tile, which is super hard to change!"
