We do plan to take out the dishwasher and completely replace it right away so I would assume that wouldn't be an issue. The layout is really functional and I can't see changing it; however, not having lived in this house yet, I suppose there could be a lightbulb moment and desire to make more significant changes. DH has been a proponent of holding off on the first floor hardwood until we agree on the kitchen remodel. I guess it doesn't hurt to wait. I just didn't want to go through flooring install / finishing process again when I live in the house already (we just did that this past summer and it wasn't fun). Thanks for your feedback everyone! I appreciate your thoughts as always.

I just wanted to update everyone with our decision. We were being quoted anywhere from $12k-$16k to lay and feather in about 600 sq ft of 3 1/4 " red oak down and to refinish everything so it matched. We decided to rip it all out because it was never going to give us the look that we wanted. And to get a flooring look we love, including the extra demo, it's going to cost us just under $13k for 1530 sq ft. of engineered wood floors. I've attached a photo of a sample of our lower and pantry cabinet with the sample of our flooring choice. Our uppers and island will be white cabinets.

We refinished one half of our house (moved everything from one side to the other), waited a couple of months and then did the other side. It is always a pain to deal with floors. We had to have our grand piano professional moved, stored and then returned to us. That was $1000! My advice is to take this opportunity to do a deep purge. Start doing that now in preparation for whatever you decide to do about the floors. Start with your garage. Get it as emptied-out as you possibly can so that there is room in there to hold as much of your furniture as possible. If you have an upstairs and you are not touching the floors up there, purge all those rooms. Purging those will allow you to temporarily store a bunch of things up there. Then start purging all the downstairs rooms. Fill your cars with stuff to take to Good Will, Habitate ReStore, or you favorite local re-sale or charity shop. Also take as many car loads of stuff to the local dump or recycling center as possible. If your kids are grown and need furniture for their new apartments or houses, see if there are any furniture pieces they want to take. Right before the wood floor people are about to start, move everything you can to the garage, upstairs (if you have one), covered patio (cover with tarp). You may even have a neighbor that will let you put some things in their garage. I took some things to my Dad's house for a couple of weeks. After all that, if you need a storage unit, go ahead and get one. They aren't that expensive for just a month. Regarding refinishing vs installing new: if your wood is the thick kind and can be sanded down and refinished, I vote for that. It'll be cheaper than replacing, and there's no reason to throw away a floor if it's not ruined. We even had broken boards and big gaps between some boards. Our wood floor person took out and replaced some of the boards, sanded everything, smeared wood filler all over it, sanded again, and stained. He was great. He even discovered that the stupid previous owners had installed red oak on one side of the house and white oak on the other side of the house! He had to work some magic to make the stains match because those woods take the stain differently. A good wood floor person can do all that for you. I can't remember how many days it took, but it seemed to go pretty quickly once they got started.

Since your floor is actually a sub floor, it was never meant to be a finished floor. For a rental, I would put down floating floors, or carpeting, etc.