If this isn't a good spot to post for help, can you send me in the right direction?

That is vinyl flooring and depending on the age of the home, you may want to test for asbestos before doing anything else. That sure looks like cutback adhesive, which contains asbestos.

If it tests negative, a floor scraper and tons of upper body workouts at home instead of the gym will be in your future. Then you call in a Pro to assess whether or not it can be sander and refinished.

Whoops- vinyl is what I meant :)

Thanks for the tip on asbestos!

I don't know if the backing is similar to the linoleum I had in my kitchen floor which had hardwood floors underneath (it was a 1929 co-op in NY), but I put a hairdryer to the edges of the pieces where it was exposed to soften the glue & then used a scraper to get them up. The heat from the hairdryer really helped - wouldn't have gotten them off otherwise.

I believe you can rent heat guns that will soften the glue/adhesive (from Home Depot, etc).

Your 'miracle' can be a nightmare in disguise. It will take an awful lot of work to get down to the wood, and then more to refinish it.
After you get it tested for asbestos, if it come back clear, invest in a heat gun. Same idea as a hairdryer, but hotter and designed to run for long periods of time. Harbor Freight has them at affordable pricing, not much more than a hairdryer.
While you're there, check out the scraping tools.
Good luck!

Now I find out about heat guns - haha! Although it wasn't too bad with the hairdryer :-)

Good luck with your project. I had the same type of situation in an old ranch but sadly, we could not get enough of the glue (tar based in a few spots, probably where patched) off for the refinishers to reasonably save the floors. It was extremely labor and time expensive and we had to pull everything out and replace the wood anyway

Sorry, the last part of my comment did not post. I suggested doing a small section of removal and then bringing in a pro to see if the exposed floor could reasonably be refinished. They can only comment on what they see but if it is really bad you will save a ton of time, muscle pain, and Aleve costs. Best of luck to you!

moral of story for all houzzers: whenever you have the urge to "update" something.... don't. these floors might have been refinished multiple times instead of gluing 'updated' materials to them in the past.

Agree with eaw0915. Turned out the original wood floors in my 1928 kitchen were not salvageable. Fortunately, my contractor suspected that from the beginning so we planned for replacement. He was right.

the 1870 fir floors in my kitchen were toast also, after maple, 3 layers of linoleum/vinyl, and 2 layers of tile were removed. underlayment and porcelain tile were installed and my kitchen ceiling was 2" higher.

The floors in my 1910 craftsman bungalow were also toast. That black mastic is a bear, so I'd bring in a good floor guy to assess before you spend too much effort to uncover more of it.

I ended up laying a new wood floor right over the top of the old linoleum. Saved a lot of anguish and probably some $$$, too.

I concur with eaw0915. Looking at a small area, my wood floors also looked salvageable-- and beautiful. When more was exposed, we discovered they were not.

They look beautiful and the transformation is amazing! Can you tell me how you salvaged them? I have the exact same situation in my 1880s house and am struggling to find a viable solution for removing the black mastic.