And it all came down to this:

White square tiles and white rectangle tiles - that's where all that tile discussion took us.

The rectangles are for one dado-height wall and the shower in the master bathroom, as well as the shower walls in the girls' bathroom. They may also show up again as the splash back in the laundry.

The little square will be set on the diagonal to make up the splash back in the kitchen and butler's pantry, tying in with the white components in the drawer handles and knobs and hopefully getting along nicely with the Kashmir White granite benchtops.

We're not just all little white tiles though, you know. We also cut loose and bought some bigger white tiles - with their friends  the chess black tiles. The idea is to make a checkerboard floor in the butler's pantry and the laundry:

So what's left?....something nice for the powder room splash back and some deep soul-searching about those hexagonal tiles for the girls' bathroom floor.