Kitchen Floors

We have a really colorful kitchen; "atomic tangerine" painted walls.....black tile counter......pretty jazzy. The floor is a slate-like tile, which I thought for sure was slate until I saw an unused tile.....I personally think the room is screaming for black and white tiles....not that there is anything wrong with the current floor.....besides a little missing grout and cracked tiles.....I just think black and white would look sooooo good in there. I guess I could say "well, there are cracks and some missing grout, so we really need to replace the whole floor", but I guess I'm not ashamed of the fact that I want to do something which is not an emergency, not necessary for the integrity of the house, not paramount to good health, just something I want to do. I have seen so many older homes with the checkerboard floors, they look so nice, and with the splashy colors in our kitchen, I think it would be awesome! I guess the only thing standing in the way is demolition of the existing floor (we are used to the house self-demolishing before we fix), it would feel weird ripping up a perfectly good (almost) floor....and it is also very labor intensive (to me anyway). I also am not sure it I should go with black and white ceramic tiles, or black and white linoleum squares...I think a large percentage of the floors I've seen like this are linoleum. I guess I will have to do some research......