Definitely use the felt pads and buy at least 4 of the sliders your friend mentioned. The sliders (without the covers) can even be used when moving furniture on carpet. I use the felt pads on the feet of my breakfast chairs and replace them every few months. Grit/dirt will collect in the felt pads and they will slowly scratch the floor if not changed out over time. So far, no scratches on the floor under my chairs! I've also used towels in the past but be warned that a heavy piece of furniture may still leave a mark when using them. I learned that the hard way when I moved a small table across my floor. Fortunately, I had only gone about 4 feet and just happened to stop to make sure nothing was being damaged. It left an indentation about 1/8" wide.

I paid to have an independent, certified flooring inspector come in to evaluate my floors. His final report noted that the pinholes were caused by an improper finish. The flooring contractor applied 2 coats of polyurethane on the same day and did not allow sufficient time for the first coat to fully dry before they applied the second coat. The inspector noted a hazed appearance in numerous areas that were indicative of the previous coat not being fully dry before the second coat was applied. The wood was not a number 2 grade selection and the inspector contacted a technical adviser from the National Wood Flooring Associate and he said that there was nothing inherent to the red oak that would have caused the extensive pinholing in the finish that was observed and that this was due to either incompatible finish products being used or improper application procedures. I had a second company come in and redo the entire refinish - sanding down to bare wood and reapplying stain and 3 coats of poly and there are no pinhole visible on any floors in the house. The fact that the issue could be corrected by completing redoing the work lends credence to the original job having been poorly done. The original company tried applying a 4th coat of polyurethane but this did nothing to fix the pinholes. If you look at page 59 of this PDF, pinholes can appear in the finish of a floor if the previous coat was not fully dry (http://www.crescenthardwood.com/nwfa/ProblemsCauses.pdf). The bottom line was that I was out a lot of money from the first contractor, which was a large reputable company in my area, because they refused to fix the issue or even test to see if their finish job was the issue and had to go through the aggravation of having the entire job redone. The second company came out and sanded the floor of a closet and reapplied stain and 3 coats of poly to ensure that it was the previous finish and not inherent to the wood. The test area showed that when done correctly no pinholes in the finish formed.

If you like the current color I recommend adding to it and using an flush divider, which we generally call a header. One advantage of this (besides costing less, being less disruptive and causing less consequential damages) is that in the future the kitchen could be recoated up to the header. Your kitchen will get several times more wear than most areas of the house and will require recoating more frequently. It's often a challenge finding a place to stop the coat that doesn't show a stop-line, meaning that we often have to recoat more area than necessary. If you were more interested in making it perfect rather than acceptable, I would recommend paying the floor guy for the wood he bought, wait until you're ready for a kitchen renovation, lace the wood in at that time and refinish everything. They may not be willing to store the wood so you might need to find a conditioned space to store it. This strategy would also protect you if something on the new kitchen varies slightly from the existing.

I’d just add a light feeling white and navy runner (add a non slip backing) down the side of the bed - it will be welcoming as you enter and provide warmth and coziness when getting out of bed. No need to add anything at bottom of bed, as you don’t want to overwhelm room and will also allow your floors to be appreciated. You could add green cushions on bed and window seat to pull in the green in headboard and I would move floor lamp to other side of chair.