Does anyone have suggestions for removing hardwood flooring for recycling into a new house? I have received an opportunity to strip a house before it is demolished to build a new one. I would like to salvage as much material as possible for reuse. the house was built in the mid ’60s with standard oak strip flooring. The flooring is nailed to 6″ pine T&G of some undetermined thickness. How can I pull it up with the minimal amount of damage?
Thanks, I appreciate your help.
Replies
use a long handled big crowbar, with sharpened end, and a 3 pound sledge. pull it up tongue side first, starting at the groove end of the board. drive the crowbar under the board at the nail on the tongue side, then rock back and forth, sorta walking the groove off the tongue. you can pull the crowbar toward you to lift the tongue side, and it sometimes help pull the nail out enough to jump off the row behind. somtimes you can get the right end free and up enough to kick it and make it leverage out at the other end.
then the fun starts. i just pulled about 1000 s.f. that was hand nailed with round nails and the roof leaked some over the years. the nails are rusted in the holes, so they dont drive out very well. i've found that you can use vise-grips and rock the nail gently until it will spin, then it will drive out. then you stack it on sleepers in the shop and wonder what the heck you're going to do with all that flooring. i'm about 50 s.f. into the denailing process, so if some one has a quicker way, please chime in.
I've driven out a lot of nails (mostly ring shank from nail guns) from crates that I got from work. The best tool that I found is one that I made from a bolt. Cut the threads off and put it in a lathe or under a drill press, and drill a hole slightly larger than the diameter of the nail that you're pulling. The hole should be deep enough so that when you put your new punch over the nail, about 1/2 an inch of the nail shank still exposed. When you hit the punch, it should drive the nail out without kinking or bending it. The hole in the punch helps support and concentrate the blow straight down the nail. Try and it works great! I was going to send that into the magazine as a tip, but I guess that's too late now.
I pulled about 600 ft.² of vertical grain, tongue and groove, Douglas Fir from a house built in 1945. It was nailed down with 2 1/2 inch common nails, and ranged in length, from 6 feet to 18 feet long. Like Davem, I pulled the tongue side up first. Starting with "wonder" bars and hammer, then crow bars and long wedges. The long wedges driven every few feet help lift up several boards at the same time. Because of the long nails, I had quite a bit of splitting of the tongues that I'll have to glue back on as I pull them. (White/yellow glue and masking tape.) It was about three days of hard work to lift but worth it because that grade of Fir is hard to come by. Good luck with yours.