Thanks so much for your help, everyone. I'm inching closer, I think. kpaquette -- your floors are beautiful (love that border)! If I go the red oak route, I really hope I can manage to get those warm gold/brown tones in the floor. Bobby99 -- That certainly is the beauty of unstained wood floors! Your golden floors look great with the black countertop, and I'd never be able to tell you have such a lovely and large companion romping on them! Northcarolina - I know what you mean about that red soil. I've got relatives in NC and when I come home from a visit, I've got to wipe the red clay off my sneakers -- it is a gorgeous soil though and would blend perfectly with the red oak - a maintenance dream! linelle, dseng, flori and i_love_my_dog -- that's what I'm struggling with the most. I'm afraid if I do anything other than red oak it will disrupt the flow and make the house seem choppy. Although the kitchen is not really "open", it has three interior doors (all leading from red oak) and you can see into the kitchen from the (red oak) front entryway. I love the red oak in all the pictures you've so graciously posted, but most of the kitchens (with the exception of oldbat's first pic) look pretty traditional; and I think our renovated kitchen will end up more transitional and I'm not sure it will look as good. I went to a nearby Lumber Liquidators yesterday (hmmm -- I only saw the bad reviews of LL after I returned). I loved the LL "Golden Teak", but after reading some negative reviews of LL, am pretty reluctant to take a chance on that. The teak has some variation though and blends with and picks up some of the red oak color, but is more of a medium brown with some red and gold tones. It really seemed like a nice compromise between the red oak and dark stained floors that would blend nicely. Didn't like unstained white oak at all (too greenish) with the gray counter. I'm tempted to try to stain oak the color of the Golden Teak. The LL guy did tell me that if I'm toying with staining an oak floor, I should go with white oak because it absorbs the stain more evenly. Can red oak be stained to pick up brown/gold tones? I'm not sure that will gain me much though, because once you stain oak, isn't it likely to show dirt and scratches much like the darker stained floor which I love but am trying to avoid because of the maintenance?

I love 'concrete gray'. The floors will warm things up a lot and I don't think you'll have to worry about the room looking cold. Is your white creamy and warm at all? I think you have some classic material colors planned and can go many ways with backsplash. What is the overall style you're going for? Classic? Contemporary? Whimsical? Organic? What is the style of your cabinets? If you're using a cabinet style that is somewhat classic, I could see adding some color like burgundy subways. You could even do something wilder like painted Mexican tiles....Something modern like glass...or older like brick. Sticking with something the color of your cabinets with a little pizazz added in accents or a liner would be elegant.

A friend just sent me this link yesterday, which is perfect reading/viewing for you! http://www.classiccasualhome.com/2017/06/black-and-white-modern-farmhouse.html?m=1Above pic is the HO's original granite which went from polished to honed in the re-do. "Since Lisa wanted dark countertops anyway....honing the existing granite gives it a newer look." Google tells me that this is your quartz below -

"I’d love to do a bold pattern, but I haven’t found one that doesn’t look dated."-well what can I say..lucky you))) ('cause I've found so many-but would leave me broke lol. Still obsessively think about some. depends on a house of course..I'm lucky to have a house that beg for tiles. And I myself am a tile person. And a pattern person. So we met each other. Me and the house. We met each other-and then compromised...)) Please share your progress as you go, if you feel like it..we'd love to see how it all comes together!