I'd be inclined to get it done right rather than employing a half measure. Call a tile/marble company to see if they could diamond grind it, or recommend a specialty contractor who could. Then you can lay your wood floor as intended. I got myself into a mall restaurant situation once and a tile contractor helped me out by using a diamond grinder that sealed against the floor and ground off all of the old concrete finish. I would have done it with my machinery but the dust could have wreaked havoc with the a/c and alarm systems.

Okay, I tried to be a bit more accurate in scaling, using the orange line to help (it's the same as the hallway line, 9'9"). Furniture in blue again; lamps are orange stars (I put a floor lamp between the chairs and table lamps behind the sofa, just to toss the idea out there). This arrangement could be flipped so that the chairs are in front of window and the sofa is in line with hallway (but still serving as a divider to create a bit of a foyer), if you want -- but -- the chairs won't be centered on the window. Don't know how much that would bug you. There's only about 10' between the front edge of the sofa and the TV wall, by this rendering. Any way you could verify measurements? The floor plan labels the living space as 27' wide, but if my math is correct, it's only about 20' wide (added the kitchen and dining together, and subtracted the laundry). 20' minus 5'-6' for a "foyer" pathway leaves 14'-15' for furniture. Sofa tables are, say, 1'-1.5' wide, sofas 3' wide, and yeah, that leaves 10'-11' between sofa and wall. Roughly the same distance between the window and the backs of the chairs. To make it feel more open, the chairs definitely need to be in front of the window, but it pushes the sofa into the "foyer," if the chairs are centered. I dunno.... I'd prioritize creating an entry space, so I would definitely not rotate the arrangement, putting chairs across from the TV. But that is 100% my untrained self, lol. Edited to add:Not sure how I feel about that one.... :-/

Ipls8xx - you state that " No surveyor or government official has authority over land boundaries." That's far too blanket a statement. It may be true where you live, but not where I live. Here, a survey conducted by a licensed surveyor is registered with the government and regarded as being considerably more than just an opinion: in the absence of a competing survey, it is considered definitive. The actual surveys where I live are based on objective data measurements (GNSS, etc), not on usage, so I'm not sure that previous owner history or the existence of fences is particularly relevant. Of course, historical surveys are known to contain errors in measurement. The methods and equipment in use 80 or 100 years ago were not nearly as accurate as modern techniques, so there are disputes over where the boundaries actually lie. If there are two surveys showing different boundaries arising out of these historic errors or inconsistencies, or if there is a single survey highlighting an area of conflict, then in such cases, there is specific legislation in place allowing the government here to decide on the correct property boundaries. So yes, governments, or at least some of them, do have authority over land boundaries. This is a different issue than "adverse possession," in which the real boundaries, as defined by an objective survey,have been encroached upon by the neighbor. That's more an issue of whether the neighbor has in fact acquired part of someone else's land simply by long-term occupation, and it's up to the courts to rule on that (assuming, of course, there is such a thing as adverse possession in the jurisdiction - it doesn't exist everywhere). If the court rules in favor of the encroacher, then the land is transferred, the boundaries change and the new survey, done by a licensed surveyor, will reflect the new boundary lines.

The brick will come off the floor very easily. I would remove it all, and then decide what to do with it. You can just put an area rug over it for now. That is a tripping hazard for little kids and a fall on that could be very dangerous.