wow, thanks for all the help! I can see that the different adjacent woods look good in your posted pictures only because they are quite differentn from each other, not sure that I want to go too light on the new wood because it would be to "blendy" with the white cabinets. A border is an interesting idea but my kitchen might be too small to be able to pull that off, I have an approx 10 x 13 U shaped kitchen with an adjacent 10 x 8 breakfast area. I appreciate the comments to consider that the lighting in the kitchen might be quite different from the hallway. That is true but I did not think of the hallway as being dark until we had the flooring changed and it surprised me how much darker it was after the flooring change. I'm going to find some dark brown tarps to put on the kitchen floor and see what that feels like. thank you!

We just had the floors redone in the 40 year old house we just bought. We also tore out the old tile that was in the foyer that ran all the way to the back of the house, and had our contractor install hardwood in that area. He bought the same kind of wood as the old floors, sanded everything down, restained all the same and is soon going to poly. You would never know which floors are old and which are new. We laid the new floor boards in the opposite direction (foyer, hall that runs by family room and dining room and hall that runs to the bedrooms - all hardwood) That way he didn't need to pull up some of the old boards to combine/blend into the same direction of the old floors... I hope that makes sense. LOL Anyway, it looks fantastic to have that area run the opposite direction, but all in the same finish. Really custom.

@Kristel Quintana - if your joists are too warped for tile, they are probably too warped for vinyl planks. If this is the case, I would recommend sheet vinyl instead. And NO sheet vinyl does NOT have to be the ugly sort. There are some stunning visuals in sheet vinyl that do NOT look like wood. In fact, you can get some STUNNING slate look floors that would look amazing next to the bamboo and the cabinets. Please, please, please assess your "flatness" quotient for the vinyl planks. Double and triple check your floor. The best way to do that = remove the existing vinyl. The existing embosed sheet vinyl needs to come out anyway....you might as well do it to see what your subfloor flatness rating sits at. Flooret is like all other planked vinyl....it needs SUPER FLAT ("perfect" comes to mind). If you realize your existing subfloor isn't going to cut it, I HIGHLY recommend looking at a sheet product to keep your preparation costs down. In other words, replace "like with like".

Ouch. That is a real nice clash going on there. Sorry that this didn't come up before you paid all that money. In essence you will be ADDING MORE to make this disappear. Like MORE area rugs than you can shake a stick at! And LOTS of art to pull the eye away from the striking colour clash. And the only other thing I can think of: YELLOW lighting. Yep. See if you can get rid of some of that gray/green in the kitchen flooring by ADDING yellow (warm) lighting to the space. The other thing to realize is all that pretty gray paint is causing the kitchen flooring to turn gray. And the answer to that is 'more paint'. Sigh....start with the lighting and go from there. All it is going to cost you is a package of "warm" bulbs. But be prepared to paint over the gray in the the kitchen.