What about the $1/sf vinyl tiles? They're easy to install (DH and I are pretty useless when it comes to DIY and we did a great job on the kitchen and bath in our previous house!), unless she's got a monster huge kitchen would probably cost little more than fooling around with layers of paint and polyurethane, and look surprisingly good. Lowes has particularly nice ones, between the Cryntel stone-look and the Novalis wood-look which is startlingly realistic, and Lowes/HD (Lowes takes HD coupons) coupons are fairly easy to get hold of. In addition, though, there are many sites online about painting vinyl flooring. Google "paint vinyl floor". It's time-consuming, may render the kitchen unusable for days as the paint and polyurethane cures, and isn't likely to wear very well (especially if she has a dog, family/friends who wear shoes in the house, or she's an enthusiastic scrubber) so she'd better start saving up for a new floor now because as it wears it may well look even worse than the original floor did, but as a temporary measure it may work ok. She could tape off the black squares and just paint the white ones, or paint the whole thing and add a stencil or something. IMO a stain would just make the floor look dirty, defeating the entire purpose!

Lisa, you can create your own mosaic patterns with the daltile mosaic designer: http://daltilemosaic.chameleonpower.com ETA I don't like that floor because it's not really mosaic and it's so obvious where the big tiles meet. Since you don't love it, why put it in? When was your house built? That will help in choosing an appropriate floor pattern.

I don't think you have room for a rug. It should be 36-42" inches larger than the table top all around, yet not run into doors, walls, baseboards or your railings. You don't want the chairs to fall off of it when pulled out and sat in. Your chairs also have a larger footprint than a standard legged chair, so they need more rug under them. Pull one out and sit down. Then get up and leave the chair pulled out. Put tape on the floor at the point where the chair base is. That's the minimum placement for the rug. so you can calculate the size you need, and I fear it will be too big to fit your floor area.

@Jan Moyer, @User my kitchen is a wide galley kitchen. It is adjacent to the dining room. All of the floors in the house are hardwood, but for some reason, the previous owners I bought the home from, decided to stain the kitchen floor a different color (or perhaps they couldn't match the original stain). So, that is the reason I've been exploring other options. Also, I just love the classic look of the black and white checkerboard flooring. I think it would look fine next to the hardwood floor in the dining area.