We recently pulled out the carpet in the two front rooms of our house (this included having to pull out a composite board and tar paper held down with thousands of ring shanked nails) with the intention of refinishing the old oak hardwood underneath. Unfortunately we've discovered lead in the varnish and there is thick lead paint over the portion at the base of the stairs and it appears to be thickly painted on the room we have not yet pulled out the carpet in but had also planned to refinish. We do have two young children, so after a lot of consideration we decided against refinishing, not only because of the lead issue but because in the cellar I can clearly look up and see the light of the room above through the nail holes, there is no sub-floor, so we decided a new floor would offer better insulation and reduce how much we have to deal with the lead dust.

We purchased 3/8" thick 5" wide engineered red oak. We are going with a cabinet grade (we had not originally budgeted for a new floor) but ordered twice as much as we need for the three rooms we ultimately want to do, so we should have enough good planks to do the job well. Here is a quick drawing of our downstairs layout, it's not to scale but just to give you a quick idea. It's also oriented with North being the top of the the paper (back of the house).

Room 1 is currently still carpeted and we believe under it is about 5.25" wide oak (we're going based on what we can see from the cellar) and we also believe is completely painted (since we can only see the edge of what we've pulled up we don't yet know the condition of the whole floor, so this is just guess work at this point based on what we can see.) The kitchen has a laminate floor that emulates wood and the "plank" direction is east/west. Ideally we want to run the new floor east/west as well. Even though all the doors to the house on south or north facing I think since the house is long east/west it will look better that way. This brings up some problems.

1st problem: My DH insists that the make sure that when you walk in through either front door and look down through the two rooms to have them appear straight to each other he needs to start flooring in Room 1 by the kitchen door and run a line off the laminate "planks" (which aren't really straight either as they were laid off a wall none of which are exactly square anymore). While I'm sure he's right I do not like starting in Room 1 when we are still essentially living in it and there is no way to seal off part of the room. For us to do it that way, for me to feel safe we'd have to move everything out and seal off all the rooms so we could contain the dust while we pull everything up (cut baseboards etc.) Since Rooms 2 & 3 are already torn out and everything is moved out of them it would be much better to do them, then move everything in there and deal with room 1, but could we get a continuous look with our wood if we did that and make it appear straight when seeing it in conjunction with the laminate in the kitchen?

2nd problem: The direction of the floor in Rooms 2 & 3 are north/south so putting the new floor in east/west runs it perpendicular to the current floor, but the floor in Room 1 already runs east/west. Can you install new boards over it also running east/west? We can't put plywood over it or the new floor would be too high for door seals. I hate thinking of doing this room in a different direction but am starting to think we'll have too?

Here are some pictures to help visualize.

Room 1 (with green carpet) with a view into Room 2 (on left) and kitchen.

Close up of the Kitchen laminate "planks" (at some point DH wants to replace this too, because he hates laminate but really it's in good shape and looks good so no point to take it out right now)

Room's 3 & 2 from east side of house

Bottom of the stairwell (the carpet has been pulled out but we laid it back down for now to cover the lead paint) which is between Room 3 and Kitchen.

Any thoughts or advice about how to layout these rooms would be appreciated. Thanks!