Advice on Re-Using Flooring?
We’ve ripped out a wood floor that was in decent condition in order to put a new bathroom in. We’d like to re-use it. It’s nothing special, but we’d like to save the money and we prefer to keep material out of the landfill if possible. We have a large closet that needs to be…
We’ve ripped out a wood floor that was in decent condition in order to put a new bathroom in. We’d like to re-use it. It’s nothing special, but we’d like to save the money and we prefer to keep material out of the landfill if possible.
We have a large closet that needs to be floored, as well as a garden level hallway that is not the main entrance. That’s where we’re planning to put it. The closet gives us a low-stakes place to test out our skills.
The boards are tongue-in-groove, and currently the old nails are sticking out. We’ve weeded out the boards that are not re-usable.
Questions:
1) should we try to tap the nails out or should we hack them off with an angle grinder?
2) will this be roughly like a new floor installation, or are there special problems that will come up?
3) any other advice on how to do this successfully?
PS, don’t leave nails IN the wood, if you have to make a cut or sand or stain, the nails will destry finish blades, rip up your sand paper and if they get wet might rust….
Get them out….
get one of these: it will be a life saver!
http://www.nailextractor.com/
We have used one for four years now and we consider it the best tool in the box!
Grabs nails with just a 1/16 showing.
I was told, anytime you want to save the finish face of the wood, pull the nails thru the back. This prevents splintering of the face finish. And most likely these are finish nails, so no problem.
If you have nails with heads on them, this tool is still great! We really abuse this thing, using it as a hammer and then some… bang on it sideways, etc….
If your going to to do any wood salvage, this is the way to go.
What kind of nails? You might want to experiment by pulling some through from the bottom side to see which method works best to minimize the amount of splintering that occurs when you remove them.
modsquad has no taste. He’d probably use engineered flooring. Reclaimed wood looks the best because of its age. For some real nice looking stuff see http://www.sylvanbrandt.com
:). Thanks modsquad. It’s nice to have one’s identity validated.
gluttons for punishment