btrflytrvlr, I'm facing the same problem and hence, googled the problem and came across your same question. I'm in So. Fla and I think the humidity hasn't helped the situation. I ripped up my parents carpeting in the bedroom (they don't have a clue yet - I'm hoping after the initial shock they'll be happy) and underneath some of the padding is lightly stuck to the parquet wood flooring. It does seem to come off, but like someone mentioned, it needs some extra elbow grease to get it off - has to be an easier way, I hope. Also, it too has a mirror image of the dots all over the floor. Would love to get them off without maring the finnish. Also, what does one do to fill the small nail holes where the carpet stripping is attached? And, where there are some fine gaps, are these to be filled or just left as is. Seems dust can easily settle in. Hope someone has some tried and true remedies. THANKS!

I just went through the same thing. But then I'm a rehabber and get my fixer uppers at foreclosure sales at half their final market value. Hand the contractor a copy of your photos, and then simply lock the contractor out of the house. Ignore any payment the contractor thinks they have coming. And start over. Document what's there. but it looks like you have plenty of pictures in hand in case the contractor has the gall to complain later formally or try to take credit for someone else's work. Moving on, the first thing you'll want to do is change your mindset to only contracting out a room or two at a time. If the contractor doesn't work out, there is less money involved. I've never seen a floor contractor who would or could show the work of his last job, especially with old rehab floor boards. I'm sure it is difficult since they often times got fired from their last job. It is true that a good contractor can take one look at your floor and assess it on sight. The problem is that you can't, and you can't tell a real contractor from a poser, and you can't believe anything that you are told by a poser. Next you'll need to assess a room of interest. You'll need to drum sand at 36 or 40 grit. A Home Depot $75/day drum sander will work fine. Always spread lowering the drum control over a 12" long rolling movement to prevent burning the floor, which is the term for a hard drum drop. An untrained millenial with that instruction could do it if you take away his cell phone for the day. You'll need the millenial for the day anyway to lift the sander. Subsequent sandings at higher grit numbers will follow. End with an orbital 12x18" sander finish buff at 100 grit starting with pencil marks on 5 separate occasions then twice with the 12x18" screen buff with use of a $1 carpenters pencil to scribble on every sq ft of sanded oak between every grit number. Any floor contractor could do it, but few will do it piecemeal. A 6" 60 grit disc on a Harbor Freight $130 Hercules Sander is used for edge sanding and to feather out any accidental drum drops which are simple to find after the first coat of stain is applied. Stay clear of professional edge sanders, which homeowners often times call the Tasmanian Devil. Stain and finish are applied wearing an FDA Approved air pressure mask fed by an air hose from a $500 HobbyAir machine plugged in outdoors. The proactive approach is more like feeling out the unstained floor with finger tips like Helen Keller or shining daylight or hallogen light on the bare sanded oak before staining to find any dips caused by hard drum drops. Using a flooring contractor, probably the best you could do would be an option to quit at $1 a sq/ft or two if the drum sanding doesn't yield accceptable results. If the floor gets too thin or the marks you wish to lose are too deep to sand out before making the floor too thin, then you have your answer, and you are ready for new wood. New wood doesn't cost much. I paid $3.20 sq/ft for the wood material plus self installation. Always pay more for longer boards in the mix. And your floor looks beat and pet or plant water stained half to death anyways. New red oak of dubious quality is widely available on Facebook for $1/sq ft in any sized quanity. You'd think you died and went to heaven if $1/sq ft new oak flooring in 2.5" width was installed in lieu of your existing flooring, moisture content, acclaimation time, and warpage aside...start really small. Dark stain like Minwax Jacobean, two or three coats, and a 15 minute wait time will cover almost anything in minimally acceptable fashion on really beat floors. Once you pull that thread in the sweater of rehab, the whole sweater often times unravels. Replacing wood flooring is not an all or nothing proposition. In one house with 1700 sq ft, I had 2 sq ft replaced in 4 different rooms, before final drum sanding. They can reweave in a repair for about $300 a spot and if the carpenter is good, you can't even tell. It is a refinish contractor who knows the good temp floor carpenters that do good spot repairs. In another house, I paid a demo contractor to remove all the existing boards and then nailed in 3286 sq ft of new red oak using a $160 floor cleat nailer from Harbor Freight, a $50 jig saw, and a $90 Porter Finish nailer from Harbor Freight, and a $160 air compressor from Harbor Freight, and a $110 10" framing saw from Home Depot. It took weekends for a couple of months. Cleats are about $10 a box at Harbor Freight. Any handyman with access to youtube videos can do the installation. The trick is hidden female-female join strips available over the counter from Lumber Liquidators for 50 cents /ft and special order nose pieces for $4/ft that have the 1/4 female grove for level drops like stairs. Works just like lego. Cleats only go in the male connection or tongue side. I hired an unsuspecting millenial handyman through Angi's List by asking for floor leveling and trained him using youtube videos to do the leveling, sanding, staining, and polyurethane paid one day at a time. Even that has to be limited to a room or two a day. Cost was less than half professional estimates and few flooring contractors will do anything without a contract for everything, and you never know which steps he can do well, and which he will fail at. In Chicago, a good flooring contractor has a cost of $1.5 sq ft., but they only like to work in the city limits. In Ohio, it's more like $10/sq ft for just the finish contractor even on simple unfinished new wood installation, which is what they all figure they are worth. You'd have to do a room complete yourself to qualify for project managing others, but then you'd be very capable for knowing when to fire someone. 90% of professional flooring installers fail at floor leveling or rather floor smoothing in older houses. After talking with the president of the NHWA, and the all of the most expensive flooring contractors in my area, it is obvious that I'm the most knowledgeable in leveling or smoothing out 20 year old big box Homes believed to have been built by the cheapest contractors in all the land. Don't allow removal of any wood strips or other underlayment pieces especially those glued or stapled in place under the existing flooring or you risk entering into the wonderland of the next level of skilled craftsman, the floor leveler who will offer to remove your floor boards to the rafters and install new underlayment plywood in lieu of leveling on top of your existing floor underlayment.

@DavidR....the reason why we advise against painting subfloors is it causes issues with permanent flooring choices later on. Example: A glue down ANYTHING (including glued carpet) has a chemical reaction (bond failure) to the paint or the urethane sitting on the subfloor. A tile floor has bonding issues with paint = need a new subfloor surface. Vinyl has chemical reactions to polyurethane/urethane to the point that the two chemicals will stain EACH OTHER (that's right....the urethane will stain the vinyl above and the vinyl will stain the wood underneath the urethane = lose-lose situation). A sealed/painted subfloor (to eliminate pet odour) underneath CARPET (stretched carpet) is a different kettle o'fish. Any other "floor" has issues being put down over top of the painted/urethaned subfloor. I've seen it dozens of times. Homeowners want a quick "pick me up" for their raw subfloors so they stain and urethane them. They live on the stained/finished OSB and then purchase flooring a few years down the line. That's when they find out they need to REMOVE or cover up the finished subfloor. Oops. That's another $2000 renovation cost they did NOT see coming! They find out that gluing down hardwood needs to go down over raw wood, not painted/urethaned wood. Or they find out they cannot tile over the finished subfloor. Or they cannot lay vinyl planks over the urethane/painted finish because the STAINING that WILL OCCUR (no one likes their white vinyl planked floor to turn ORANGE because the urethane below it BLED THROUGH to the surface....that's a REALLY upsetting event). You see where I'm going with this. Anyway....that's more along the lines of "please don't paint the wood" response I gave. There are very few positives to a painted subfloor - your situation is one of the ONLY positives. The rest leave the owner with a bigger mess than if they had just left it alone and thrown some carpet down "in the mean time".

I'm going out on a limb here by suggesting you find out what type of homeowner DIY asbestos removal is ALLOWED by your state/local community. In the USA, there are some states (sorry - I don't live there so I don't know which ones allow this) allow a small square footage of homeowner DIY Asbestos mitigation. I know there is at least one state that allows (roughly) 135sf of DIY mitigation. What materials does that 135 entail? I don't know. Does that include the asbestos filled cut-back adhesive? I don't know. How does it work? I don't know. Because you are in 'investigation mode' and are looking at removing the hated tile in the hallway and mudroom, you *might be allowed to do it yourself....so long as your state/location allows it. You will have to investigate if your state allows it. You will have to follow the rules which includes landfill requirements for the 'bagged and tagged' asbestos tiles (and pay any fees required). As for me, I would do everything ELSE...but not the asbestos tile. You can DIY hardwood install. In theory you can DIY sand/finish on your own. I would pick a match to your current hardwood (that means width, cut, species and grade) and then use a high-end water based poly to get you the toughest possible finish. You can leave the current hardwood alone until you can move your stuff to the other side of the house. You then sand/refinish the existing hardwood in the IDENTICAL finish. No stain. Stains are picky and it is near impossible to match a stain a year or so later (it takes a special refinisher to get it done). Once you are ready for the kitchen RENOVATION you then demolish ALL the asbestos based tiles...with professional mitigation (assuming your state doesn't allow for DIY). I know your DRIVE is to get the tile OUT....but it isn't in your budget to do so properly. And your kitchen renovation is NOT in your budget for a full kitchen flooring install. It doesn't make any sense to remove the hated-tile today (spending a few thousand on kitchen flooring) only to have to REDO the kitchen flooring when you do a complete gut in a few years. It is money wasted. Those of us who have posted on Houzz long enough know this is going to happen. And I mean 98% chance you cannot save the replacement kitchen floor. Ask youself: Will I have the finances in 7 years to redo the kitchen floors when I do a full gut of my kitchen? Will it bother me that I have different floors in the hallway/mudroom than in the kitchen when I do the kitchen reno?