I have a split and am planning on knocking out the half wall between kitchen and dining room. There will be a peninsula added making the kitchen U shaped. We ill have stools on the dining room side. There is currently hardwood flooring in both rooms but when the wall comes down there will be a big gap where the wall was so we need to make it look like a wall was never there. We want to put in new flooring and want the easy to be able to wash tile especially near the sink (spills etc) and also like kthe formal look of hardwood under the dining table. We have a large dog and worry about him scratching new wood flooring. How do we make it work and flow throught the two rooms?