Home Improvementing: Baseboards

Removing, Painting and Reinstalling Baseboards

When I started my flooring project, I initially planned to leave the baseboards in place and only add a shoe moulding to cover the gap left by the flooring along the walls.

After we did the flooring in my bedroom, I changed my mind. The original color of the baseboards did not match my new flooring. I also figured it would be easier to paint them after they were removed, and it would be easier to cover the gap along the wall left by the flooring if the baseboards went overtop of the floor.

This photo taken with my cell phone shows the original baseboards with the new flooring. It just didn't match, in my opinion, so I decided they needed to be removed and painted.

The problem was that removing the baseboards from my room after the flooring was installed ruined them. I had to buy new baseboards for my room, and I decided that was way too expensive for my budget. 

Besides, why replace the baseboards when the ones already in the room were sized to fit the walls? It made much more sense to simply remove the ones we had, carefully, and paint them to coordinate with the new flooring.

Getting them out is the hard part, but with a little practice and patience, it is not as hard as it seems.

My tools.

Items you might need:

Safety glasses
Gloves
Pry bars of several sizes
Hammer
Pliers to help pull nails, if necessary
Container to collect the nails
Wood glue for any broken baseboards
Clamps
Sandpaper
Orbital sander
Paint with primer in it
Finishing nails
Nail set
Optional: Nail gun and compressor

These make pulling out all the extra nails as well as the carpet padding staples super easy.

Don't forget the safety gear!

Again, follow the instructions that come with your tools, use safety gear, and, most importantly, use common sense when doing any home improvement projects. What I describe here is only what I've learned from my own experience and not the only way or best way to do things.

How I do it:

My technique is to take the medium pry bar, the blue one showing above, and try to fit it beside a nail near the end of the baseboard. I use the hammer to help the pry bar down between the wall and the baseboard. I wiggle the baseboard slightly away from the wall, but don't force it. I apply even pressure to try to bring out from the wall.Then I proceed down the wall easing the baseboard away from the wall as I go. I work my way back and forth until the baseboard comes free. Depending on how long the baseboard is it may take a few passes to get it away from the walls.

The only ones I've broken are the smaller ones that make it hard to get the pry bar between the baseboard and the wall because of how close together the nails are. Sometimes those also have glue on them. When the baseboard did break, a little wood glue and clamps would bring them back together just fine. After sanding and painting, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference one bit.

I recommend coming up with some sort of marking or labeling system to mark the wall and the back of the baseboards. After removing the baseboards from most of the house, labeling them will go a long way toward identifying where they belong when they are ready to be reinstalled. In fact, it's made my job much easier for the baseboards I've reinstalled so far. You can use numbers or a combination of numbers and letters to identify the room they came from, like Up Hall 1, UH 2, etc. for the upstairs hallway. Going around the room in sequential order also will help keep track.

Painting goes better after the baseboards are sanded. The orbital sander makes fast work of sanding the baseboards. Once they are sanded, I recommend using the paint that already has the primer in it. You usually need one or two coats maximum.

Once the paint is dry and the floor is in, the baseboards can be replaced. Finishing nails are best to nail them to the wall. A nail set will help counter sink the nail heads slightly below the surface. Nail sets come in a kit. You place the nail set that fits the nail head over the nail head, hammer it and the nail sinks below the surface of the wood. You can cover the hole later with painter's caulk. It makes for a much nicer finished look. That is if you can get the nails in right.

I suck at hammering nails

Personal note: I tried this part, and I totally sucked at it. It was bad, horrible really, and took forever just to get one nail in correctly. I bent a lot of nails and had huge holes where I tried to sink the nails. I'm just not that good at hammering nails. Thankfully, my disaster was isolated to my closet, which won't be widely seen by the public. After that, I wisely decided that I needed to find a better alternative.

I shopped around and chose a compressor and nail gun. They were a little intimidating the first time I used them, but once I read the instructions several times and understood how everything hooked together, using them was much easier than I imagined. The nails sink below the surface automatically. A little painter's caulk fills those holes nicely.

In fact, just recently I replaced the baseboards in my upper hallway after finishing the flooring. Using the nail gun took minutes once everything was set up. It was also much cleaner, unlike the multiple bent nails and such that I ended up with in my closet.

A photo of the finished baseboard in the hallway I recently completed.

One of the lessons I have learned is that the right tools make all the difference. It's better to do the job right the first time than to mess things up and have to spend more money to fix the problem later.

Oh, I saved a good portion of the baseboards that I removed from my room despite their brokenness. I have a feeling that when I get to the bathrooms, some of the baseboards will be unsalvageable and need to be replaced. I can use the pieces left from my bedroom to replace those. It isn't a total loss, and the learning experience saved me more money in the end.