What should the style of the house be?

Downton Abbey season finale and all I can think about is an English kitchen.  I fell in love with this style.... except less basement dungeon like.

More like these....

Dark and light

and not teal cabinets, but I liked the glass front doors on top.

These are all shaker style which are nice and simple.

So what happened?

I tried to buy a floor, I can't tell you how many obstacles there have been.  Mostly my taste, the location of the delivery, the limited stock of inventory and the high prices available locally.

I started out wanting hardwood, a no no over concrete unless there's a lot of prep involved $$

So I considered hardwood porcelain tiles.

I came up with several lovely combinations.

Really pretty and soft, no contrast here, Lovely right?

The nice man at the store gave me an estimate of $7K and complimented me on my selection saying it was the most inspired combination he'd seen that week.  I thanked him and ran.

Lowes had this combination.

$1.6 K

They didn't have enough in stock, then they told me it was critically important that all of my shades / lots be the same because there was wild variation in the tile.

Back to the drawing board.

How about these?

Within my budget, but I had been warned by my contractor to stay away from large tiles.

I loved these, just a touch more expensive but too modern for the space, maybe for the next house.

Looks like I'm getting away from the wood, so I might as well explore all of the other tiles.

Maybe slate or stone.

These had so much variation between the tiles that it was going to look busy.

Then I saw this.

These have a little less contrast, they are light and the space is small, not quite rustic, this will be a very feminine palette. 

On the company's website, they had this photo showing them installed with the different sizes that are available.  I like it, and we'll just have to make it work.  We'll have to be creative to get to a modern Downton look.