We have carpet everywhere in the house except the bathrooms and the kitchen and it is disgusting. It's wrinkling in places and the previous owners were not good about cleaning up after their dogs. If you spill water on the carpet, it smells like dog pee. We want to replace it in the next couple of months with a high quality laminate or hardwood - haven't fully decided. We have a 16 month old toddler right now and potentially more in our future, and live in the Midwest with a highly variable climate, so we need something very durable. My question concerns a future kitchen reno we'd like to do, which would be no sooner than 5 years from now. We will probably open up the wall between the kitchen and living room to create one great room. Should we purchase enough flooring to cover the kitchen area so that we have it to use later? Would it be weird to have different flooring in the kitchen area from the living room if they become one big room? I don't want to spend the money on new flooring for the rest of the house, leave out the kitchen, and then feel like I have to redo the flooring later, wasting all that money.