We've recently purchased an older home (built in 1934) and have steadily been at work painting, patching, updating and tearing up carpet -- which led to the discovery of hardwoods in the living room and master bedroom.

(Before - Old carpet in the living room)

As the home has been constantly remodeled in the last 80 years, the original hardwood in the living room only extended to a few feet shy of the back door.

(Current - View to the back doors)

We had originally hoped to extend the hardwood to the hallway that you see in the last photo and tile from one end of that hall to the other. Extending the hardwood would give a clean end to one room (that is, the flooring wouldn't end midwall segment back there) and tiling would give continuity to a previously piecewise hallway. (Tile or laminate or something lovely. We have dogs, and figured that would save the hardwood a little bit, with the in-out transition of dirty paws)

But as I alluded to earlier, our remodeling homeowner friends of years past have dictated otherwise.

(Very, very current state of my home as of writing this. The flooring guys tore up not one, but two layers of plywood. I knew there was going to be a good conversation when the room fell silent and one of the two guys goes..."oh.")

The floor joists in the addition are flush with the subfloor in the original home and the back doors/back half of the house is supported by those floor joists. So no hardwood extension (sniff, sniff).

But that's ok! It's part of the character of the home, and I was thankfully not naive enough to think that this would go off without a hitch. That being said, houzzers, what would visually work well here? Should I do a lighter tile-esque thing to complement the kitchen (off to the right in the first photo), or a completely different color, or faux wood? Since I can no longer make it seamless, should I just embrace that and do something funky (like a wide transition of an alternating color/tile between the wood and the hallway) or just stick mostly to my original plan and do the whole area in one color?