Okay, I think I see what you are getting at. I should be able to lay flooring into the doorway with ease and then maybe screw down a straightedge to the door frame (or pocket screw it in place) and route a perfect line. Then it would be alot of small adjustments, but I'd rather do that on one filler strip than every floor board. I should have said, the boards meet this doorway edge on, that is, the boards are the long part of the T and the doorway is the top of the T. Thanks. Anthony

Sure, you can replace the existing tile and do the carpeted areas if you want to deal with the mess and expense. It's not at all an undoable proposition. It's commonly done. If you want to break it up and put tile where the carpet currently is, it's better to have a coordinating color but not a "matchy" color. If you do something too close to what exists, it looks like you tried to match and missed. It also works to use decorative listellos or different sizes of the new tile to create a pattern that separates the two areas.

Some might scoff at real stuff next to fake, but I have a few areas of real next to fake in my home which look fine (stucco next to hardie board, real marble next to fake ceramic marble tiles, and wood tile next to real wood to name a few). My wood next to wood tile is running the opposite way and I think it looks fine and was a good tradeoff considering the functional improvement tile provides in combined kitchen/mudroom area and the difficulty of matching 100 year old douglas fir, however 1) The opposite direction run makes sense for the orientation of my kitchen, that is the tile runs with the long dimension of the kitchen 2) Its at natural room transitions, not an abrupt change in an open room 3) The two woods are clearly different from one another so not trying to "match" per se and missing but they are in the same tone family, that is (to my eye at least) both are a neutral brown without any significant grey/red/etc. 4) I carefully picked a tile with some texture to look similar to the 100+ year old original floors. In your case, I'm not sure it works so well. Seems like you have grey "wood" joining with the actual reddish wood in what seems to be an open(ish) area. Also one is sort of a distressed rustic sort of look whereas the other is a shiny smooth (I assume prefinished) look. Seems like you already bought your tile, not sure if you have the opportunity to still change your mind. If you are 100% committed to the floor, I'd do them opposite directions.

It would be expensive to do it all in hardwood. I think you could probably do it with paint. I assume the existing treads are some other type of wood? You could do vinyl, but you'd want to add matching nosing and any change in step height could cause safety issues. Also, if you have a special step at the bottom (e.g., rounded) it would complicate things. It seems like too much work for what you will get. As long as the treads are in decent shape, I'd just fill any nail holes with wood filler and paint with a good floor/porch paint (probably need to prime first). Anything really dark, whether it's paint or vinyl will show more dust/lint, etc. Think about a nice stair runner in the middle. It will help disguise the fact that the treads are different than the floors.