I might be immune to how my house looks but I really don't think my tripawd floors look too bad. But it's been this way for at least 5 years – I am very used to it.  I opted to go the many rugs route.  I brought these rubber backed rugs at Walmart.  They still have them but not in same color as I have. They came in various sizes. They were not that expensive – I may have around $200 in them (I think). 

They are pain to pull up and mop the floors  – so I don't!  (well, I do about every 6mths) But the one thing that I learned is the dog hair and dirt will eventually get on the rubber backing and they'll start sliding.   And being I'm in the desert, they do tend to dry out a bit.  So, what I did after  two years or so is glued them to the tile!  At first, I used a glue spray made for just that but that didn't last very long.  So, I eventually got out the handy glue gun and tipped each corner of the rug.  That has worked great!  Now I just vacuum them.  But if you just barely put glue on the corners, you can pull them up to clean the floor. 

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't eat off my floors and I might be growing diseases but HEY! they don't look bad! 

So here's what my kitchen looks like:

We have carpet runners down all our tile hallways and down two sides of the kitchen (from the hallway to Trouble's food tray and from the food tray to the back door). Not expensive runners, the kind that come on a roll at Home Depot.  If/when we ever get the house completed I'll decide whether to replace them with nice ones.  I started out with the rubberized shelf liner, but it slipped too much.  It would work as a temporary measure.

In our old place where we seemed to always have people over, we had pretty nice looking runners that we put down, but here in the mountains where nobody ever comes to see us, we haven't gotten any. So we're making do with seven mismatched throw rugs in the kitchen.

 

Who comes to see me?!!!  It's not like Comet is good hostess!  Neighbors call first and say, "meet me outside"!    

Shanna, these weren't expensive at Walmart.    

Comet doesn't look too friendly in that shot.  Those teeth look frightening!

carmenmcconnell said:

 

At least with the hardwood they could dig their nails into the (expensive) wood.

that's so funny.  when we purchased this house five years ago, the entire main floor was hardwood, which developed nice 'grooves' under each window, at the bottom of the stairs, at every turn, etc…. we had a broken water pipe two years ago, and had almost all the hardwood replaced with tile…  now the pretty tile is covered with a variety of rugs so gayle can once again get traction…go figure.