We had tile in our old kitchen, and like You found, not the easiest thing on feet and legs, or cleaning either, especially the grout.

Since we have a slab house, We installed Engineered wood.
It's been in 7 years now sand still looks as new!

Well really like it.

Gary

I have white oak floors stained cinnamon in my library and chestnut sapele wide planks in the living ,dining area, EIK, and BR hallways. I left it to my floor professionals to do what they thought was best in the direction they ran the flooring and they ran them in the same direction as the library. I was worried that it would look akward but it looks fine. I can't post pictures because my floors are wall to wall mover's quilts right now.

The floors run under my appliances. It remains to be seen if that was a wise move or not but it seemed to be at the time.

Aside from the very small incremental cost, I don't see why you wouldn't run floors under the appliances. The issues around floors vs. cabinets first doesn't apply when talking about appliances.

The direction to run the planks will depend in large part on your base floor. If it is wood, you should run the planks the opposite direction from the joists. If concrete, that is not an issue.

We have the same wood through-out, but had to turn it in part of the house due to change in floor joists. I thought it would look terrible, but it actually adds some interest to the floor and looks nice. We have solid wood throughout and I couldn't be happier with that, but it is a matter of preference. Engineered wood has more consistency throughout the grain while natural wood can vary quite a bit. We installed wide plank that looks like it came from 1850, but we like that style.