To confirm or price

• Is the real thing achievable, and what is the extra over a standard stone or tiled splashback?Meeting notes
• If not — which tile gets closest? Same question as the bathroom “alternative tile”, and it could be one product for both.Meeting notes
• Grout, sealing, and how it cleans behind a cooktop in a short-stay property.Meeting notes
• John is leaning to the crazy pave (25 Oct 2026), as long as it is easy to clean or protected. What would you do to make it so? Our understanding of the usual ways: honed and filled stone pieces rather than tumbled (no open pits to hold grease); epoxy grout, flush with the face; an impregnating (penetrating) sealer that does not change the colour, re-applied every year or two; and behind the cooktop either the benchtop stone or a panel of clear low-iron toughened glass fixed over the crazy pave, so it still shows but wipes like glass. Which would you recommend for a holiday let, and what does each add?Meeting notes
• Cost × 3.Meeting notes
• Square tumbled travertine instead of the crazy pave (Harriett's suggestion; pictures added 7 Oct). A 100 × 100 × 10 tumbled travertine in a warm cream, straight grid, about 3 mm joints, for example Australian Paving's Travertine Tile 100 × 100 in Classic Cream. In four places: behind the cooktop, the bench beside the fridge, the butler's sink wall and the laundry — about 3.1 m² per dwelling, 9.2 m² for the three before waste. We do not want the benchtop stone run up the wall. Please price it against the tendered tiled splashback, with stock for all three kitchens from one batch.Meeting notes
• A splashback with more colour or contrast (John, 8 Oct): the cream stone options read as bland for a holiday let, so we are also looking at a glazed tile with some life in it, in the same three places. Pictured: a charcoal finger tile with dark grout, matte and gloss, one dark honed stone slab, a light aqua finger tile stacked upright, and a sea-green subway. Which would you choose for this kitchen, would a colour date, and which tile ranges should we look at for samples? The benchtop stone run up the wall has also been suggested (Harriett; Franci likes it). John does not want it: too bland, with no contrast against the benches. It is pictured here too, so the options can be compared side by side. After the meeting of 8 Oct: Harriett liked the gloss charcoal finger tile and John is happy with it; that is the current lean, not yet confirmed. No product has been chosen: please suggest one, with a sample. Two more ideas, 13 Oct: we asked two independent AI design reviews for ideas of their own, and both came back to a small glazed tile in a plain straight grid, the same on all three walls, with epoxy grout close to the tile's colour. One is a blackened olive glazed square (100 × 100, near-charcoal from a distance, olive and brown up close); the other a sandy taupe tile (about 300 × 75, stacked flat, a shade deeper than the benchtop). Both are pictured. Neither is a product yet: does a tile like either exist in your suppliers' ranges, and could we see one beside the benchtop stone and the laminate samples?Meeting notes
• Square travertine behind the cooktop: tumbled travertine is porous and pitted. Would you use it there as it is, with the pits grout-filled and a penetrating sealer, or a honed and filled travertine of the same size behind the cooktop only? Grout colour (warm beige, not white), epoxy or not, and how the tile's edge finishes against the oak frame of the cooktop recess with no metal trim showing.Meeting notes