We are completely renovating our open floor plan kitchen (refinishing flooring, replacing cabinets, countertops, appliances) and have come across the following design dilemma. The existing flooring is mostly narrow plank, deep groove hardwood floors with a 13x8 foot area of tile (see pictures below). We are going to rip up the tile and replace that area with hardwood and refinish the hardwood floors. Our flooring guy has doubts he'll be able to seamlessly integrate the new area into the existing hardwood given the older style of plank and also suggested that we wouldn't deep grooves in the kitchen area for clean up purposes.

Here's the dilemma, we are definitely replacing the tile with hardwood, but since we know the wood won't match , we are trying to come up with ideas for what we can do in the 13x8 area (with wood flooring) that makes sense and looks good.

I've thought of doing a herringbone pattern or something to that effect, but I'm just not sure. Any design ideas for this wacky 13x8 area??