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.

Home Improvementing: Carpet Removal

Carpet Removal

Let’s say you are replacing your carpet and would like to find a way to save some money on the installation. One way you can do that is to handle the removal of the old carpet yourself. It’s not complicated, but it is hard work. If you aren’t afraid of a little hard work, read on…

In my case, I was replacing the carpet with laminate flooring and the color of the baseboards did not match the color of the flooring. I decided to remove the baseboards, sand them, and paint them. After I did the first room, I decided that the best time to remove the baseboards was before removing the carpet. Removing the baseboards is another post, though.

Here I just want to talk about removing the carpet itself and cleaning up the crud underneath it.

Items you might need:

• ·         Carpet removal knife with replaceable blades
• ·         Work gloves
• ·         Safety glasses
• ·         Twine
•         Scissors
• ·         Extra garbage bags
• ·         Needle nose pliers
• ·         Pry bars
• ·         Hammer
• ·         Bucket
• ·         Vacuum cleaner
• ·         Broom and dust pan
• ·         Dust mask
• ·         Long sleeved shirt
• ·         Long pants
• ·         Sturdy closed-toed shoes

As always, read the instructions that come with your tools and ask questions of the folks at the hardware stores to make sure you understand your project. Use common sense and be safe when doing any home improvement projects. I am describing here what worked for me. You may decide other tools or methods may work better for you. More power to you.

After all of the furniture has been removed from the room, open your windows or at least give them a crack. You will be stirring up a lot of dust when you start ripping up the carpet and the open windows will help provide some air circulation.

Using your carpet knife, wearing your gloves, long sleeves, pants, sturdy shoes, dust mask and safety glasses, begin making cuts into the carpet about as wide as you want to handle when it is rolled up and tied. Bigger is not always better here. You need to be able to remove it from the house and get it to the curb or garbage container so be smart about how big of a roll you want to deal with. Consider also that the carpet is probably going to be pretty nasty once you get it up off the floor. Trust me. 

Roll up your strips of carpet and tie them up with twine. Check with your local garbage service, but mine would not take the carpet unless it was rolled and then tied.

You’ll want to do the same thing with the padding underneath. That rips a little easier so use the garbage bags for the random pieces that don’t get rolled up.

It gets pretty gross at this point.

It doesn't matter how often you vacuumed or if you just did it before taking up the carpet. You will be really grossed out by how much dirt is under that padding. For those of us with dust allergies, you will want to take frequent breaks and wear your dust mask during the carpet removal.

Sweep and vacuum as much of the crud up before you begin taking up the tack strips and staples. You’ll probably want to vacuum one more time after you've removed the tack strips and staples, but since you are going to be kneeling or sitting on the floor, you don’t want to be kneeling in that grossness.

Use your pry bar and hammer to pry the tack strips up from the flooring. It helps to aim the pry bar between the nails and don’t force it too much. Aim to loosen the entire strip by applying steady pressure with the pry bar along the length of the strip, and as you loosen it, more of the strip will come up without breaking into small bits. The more you do it, you will develop a feel for it. It's the same technique with the baseboards.

I like to use the WonderBar for the nails that remain stuck in the floor. It does a great job of getting those out without snapping off the head of the nail. Again, loosen the nail by applying steady pressure, but don’t force it or you run the risk of snapping the head of the nail off.

For the staples, take your time and go methodically around the room prying up the staples where the padding was stapled to the floor with needle-nosed pliers or other implements that seem to work for you. I even used a paint key that opens paint cans at one point. Use the bucket to collect them as you go. It will make clean up easier. Also, you want to collect them so you don’t accidentally step on one or lean on one with your hand. Not pleasant.

Take your time.

Allow plenty of time for the carpet removal and the removal of the tack strips and staples. Take plenty of breaks because the dust you stir up will be really disgusting. Removing the staples is tedious and getting all of that dust and dirt up off the floor is nasty, but the subfloor will be in much better shape for whatever floor treatment you decide to go with in the end. If you are paying someone else to install the new flooring, doing the removal of the old stuff yourself can save you hundreds on the installation costs.

Adventures in Home Improvementing

Home Improvementing

I think I briefly mentioned some home improvementing that I have been doing lately. It’s been a drain on my finances for one, which has prompted me to rethink how I handle my finances which, in turn, prompted me to start this blog. In other ways, though, it has been rather enlightening and even liberating.

The perpetrator showing off his new haircut last year.

Blame it on the Cat

In March 2013, I came home from dinner out with my daughter to find that the cat had gotten locked in my bedroom. In his attempt to free himself, he clawed at the carpet at the doors until he shredded it down to its tack strips. This was more than a little Duck tape could cover so my plans to buy a new appliance for the kitchen was shelved and it was decided that it was time to replace the carpet.

The carpet needed to go so this was not a huge surprise. I had wanted to replace it with laminate flooring for years. Laminate flooring would be better for my dust allergies and easier to take care of, too. The problem was that I figured that I could afford the supplies, but not the installation. I was going to have to screw up my courage and face this problem myself. I work full-time and my schedule can be rather demanding so I've been doing most of the work myself on the weekends.

The landing at the top of the stairs finally finished. The door to the left is to the bathroom, which will be rehabbed at a future date.

Big Honking Milestone Achieved!!

This past weekend, I finally finished the flooring on the second floor. An enormous milestone. HUGE. Dance-worthy. Seriously. I even opened a bottle of Prosecco in celebration. Yes, it's that big. I still have a lot more to go on the first floor, but I am gaining confidence as I go.

You can look forward to a few posts about various steps of the project that I've accomplished along the way and how I feel you can use a little elbow grease and an aptitude for learning to save a little money if you decide to take on similar projects.

In the meantime, here are two things I've learned about myself during this process: 1) Burning your elbow with a heat gun is a great way to remind yourself to keep them off the table; and 2) I am capable of far more than I ever realized. Far, Far more.