Countdown to kitchen floor demo

My DB is leaving for a business trip this Sunday, and that means it is a perfect time to get some major home improvement project done.  DIY stuff is just not his thing.  Unfortunately for him, it is TOTALLY my thing.  It is my creative outlet and my stress reliever (well...when things go well), but to be polite I generally wait until I have some time to myself before I tackle anything major.  He'll be gone for 2 1/2 weeks, so it is the perfect time to be brave and attack the thing that bothers me the most in my house...the kitchen floor. 

I have HATED this kitchen floor since I bought the house nine years ago, but I have postponed doing anything to it simply out of fear.  It helped that I had other projects to tackle first.  However, the floor really is quite a mess.  First, the kitchen used to be two separate rooms when the house was built.  The wall between the rooms was taken down and now the entire kitchen is about 256 sq feet which is really nice.  About 3/4 of the room is covered with what was originally white carpet (now dirty beyond what anyone can steam clean away).  Yes, you read that correctly....WHITE CARPET!!!  What kind of crazy person puts white carpet in the kitchen???   Anyhow, on the side of the room where the sink is there is about a 4x12 piece of vinyl flooring that is raised above the rest of the floor by plywood.  The carpet and vinyl are "joined" by some weird "S" shaped metal stripping that everyone trips over because it extends across the entire width of the room. 

To add to the mess, the carpet is unraveling at the stripping so if you step the wrong way you get a carpet tack in your foot.  OUCH!!!  And...it gets worse!  Under the top layer of vinyl is 1/4" plywood which sits over even uglier vinyl flooring.  Fortunately (or not), it appears that the uglier vinyl flooring extends throughout the entire room and not pieced together like the rest of the flooring.  From my "core samples" there is hardwood floor under at least part of the room.  I'm hoping that it is on the entire floor, but until I pull all of the layers of ugliness up I have no way to know.  I have already removed the carpet and vinyl that was in the pantry and it all came up fairly easily with only a little glue residue. 

It looks like the prior owners used some really cheap adhesive that didn't stick well to the finish of the wood floor.  I'm hoping that is a premonition of good things for removing the rest.   Keep fingers crossed!

Ideally, I'd absolutely love to refinish the hardwood flooring.  I don't know if that is really possible since I don't know if it extends throughout the entire room AND I don't know what condition it is in.  It could be rotten under all of the vinyl layers by the sink.  Plus, there is the challenge of where the former walls used to be.  From what I've seen with my "core samples" I think the holes were just filled with some sort of leveling compound.  If the hardwood is salvageable, I'll have to call in a professional to at least patch it.  I'd like to try to refinish it myself, but I don't know if my DIY skills are quite up to that challenge.  

So, that is my challenge.  I can't even call a contractor at this point to get a decent estimate on a total redo of the floor because there is no way to know what is underneath all of this mess.  My goal for now is to just rip up what is there now so I can evaluate what I have.  I have finally gotten to the point that having ugly wood floors or even a subfloor will be better than what I have now.  I don't think I could possibly hate the floor anymore than I do right now.