Kitchen renovation and decor questions

[TremoloGreen]

We're looking to knock together some small useless rooms at the back of our house to create a kitchen diner with access to the outdoors. Just wanted to tap into the infinite wisdom of the Property/DIY board before I make some final decisions, ranging from important to fairly trivial.

I think we should vacate, at least for the bit where walls are being knocked down and everything is covered in dust. How long did this take in your experience? Getting out for more than 2 weeks might be difficult.

Open shelves vs wall cupboards for storing plates and cups. I love the look of open shelves but am I living a Pinterest fantasy? Have you had them and regretted it?

Splashback ideas... struggling with what is going to look right. Will have quartz worktops (liking simplicity of white but not committed) with 10cm upstands. Don't want miles of tile, but thought a square tiled splashback would work and fit with overall aesthetic I'm going for. Will it look weird? Alternative would be a quartz splashback to match tops, but worried it will look too modern. It would just be behind the cooker and up to wherever the extractor stops.

Assuming a tiled splashback - white to match worktops or greeny/blue to match walls? Either way, it would be zellige type tiles. Will try and post a pic of some of the choices...

I’d have the quartz behind the cooker personally.

And open shelves, while pretty, are a huge no for me. They just add to the dusting!

Ha ha - that's my concern!

Every picture I see of a quartz or glass splashback is paired with a very modern/minimalist (grey) kitchen, which is not really the vibe of my house... so I'm struggling to picture it. Example posted.

If you value your sanity, don’t have open shelves. You’ll be a slave to them. Everything gets covered in a vile combination of dust and grease. I put up with ours for about a year before they had to be replaced with the cupboards we should have had to start with.

I think you can have the worktop up to the extractor, if you are using that William Morris type wall paper it won't look too slick for sure, but a pure white counter will be more modern than the butcher block type you have in your mood board. The greeny blue will really bring out the orange in your terracotta tiles, and I'd use a contrast for the splashback, maybe something that ties in the terracotta. You could put the wallpaper on the wall with glass in front of it.

Aah so the oak worktop will just be on an island/breakfast bar. And any shelves/door to outside will be oak. The worktop on the main kitchen units will definitely be quartz of some type as I hate the wood around the sink deal we inherited. The walls will be painted in the greeny colour.

We won't be using wallpaper behind the cooker/units... we may not use it at all, but it is up in the current study, one wall of which will become the back wall of pantry shelving so I may just leave it there if it's preservable. It was clearly put up before it started costing £75 a roll!

There's also this grey tile I managed to pick up