Working on Stripping 1940s Oak(?) Floors

Hello all!
In the last year, we have purchased a home, and our goal is to rehab as much as we can by ourselves. At the moment, the majority of our projects are a work in progress (we want to have lives, too!) and our goal is to have a couple of them completed by the beginning of May.

I wanted to document some of these projects in hopes to help some people considering we all don't have Pinterest-Perfect Homes! And I do want to let you know that these are all works-in-progress. I am learning everyday, and I hope you will bear with me in this process!

At the moment, we are working on our oddly shaped attic/upstairs area. To start off, this area was used as an upstairs bedroom for the previous owners. Our goal is to try and make it an upstairs TV / living room. Here are some photos.

Looking towards the front of the house

As you can see, the area towards the front was carpeted, which we ripped out because we uncovered hardwood floor underneath. UNFORTUNATELY, someone decided to cut into the wood to drop in drywall and make a wall. I have no idea when this happened or why they decided to go that route, but we were pretty miffed by that discovery. You can see part in the images below.

Keeping positive, the hardwood floors were in above average condition. There was a generous amount of polyurethane on it (not to mention paint splatter and scratches spread throughout) which made us want to strip it. I know, if it's not broken, don't fix it...but I couldn't help myself (and neither could my fiance haha.)

I looked into getting it professionally sanded. The average quote was about $1.95/Square Foot (and that's JUST sanding - no staining involved.) Considering I'm a DIY-er, I wasn't going to go that route.

I was going to rent a sander myself, but I was scared away by people saying that I could essentially sand a hole in the floor, and I definitely didn't want that! I was then suggested to use a wood-stripper. I started this project last night, and I used some stripper that I had - Crown Tuff-Strip - but I think moving forward I will be using Citri-Strip (have not tried it yet, but I will post my review in a future blog.)

Using the chemicals in a closed area kind of scares me. I know my best route is to sand it, I want to increase the longevity of these floors, not file it down to nothing!

I put about 2 coats on last night of the Tuff-Strip, scraped it off, and then used sandpaper to get the excess out of the grooves, and I think it's looking pretty good so far!

***PLEASE NOTE, you should be using mineral spirits to remove the excess stripper off, which is what I will be doing moving forward. Also, I am not a flooring expert, but I wanted to share my testimony considering I have not found much about the subject. I have found one post that you should read before jumping into this yourself: How to Chemically Strip Hardwood Floors.***

Lastly, I BELIEVE that these are Oak Floors. They are Tongue and Groove, so I also believe that they are original to the house, which was built in 1942. If anyone has anything different to tell me, PLEASE let me know! I love learning about all of this stuff :).