Continuing on with our home renovation project I'm here to say that the demolition stage has started! Part of the overall plan is to replace the hardwood floors in the kitchen, pantry and breakfast nook with tiles, but the hardwood in those areas is actually quite new and in really good shape. We probably would have kept it if we weren't removing walls and needing new plumbing, electrical and duct work lines re-routed. It feels wrong to toss the floors in the trash and let them go to waste so I've decided to salvage as much of them as I can.
I'm hoping that there is enough boards to finish our floor in our bedroom. That space currently has carpet but the carpet is old and my allergies are pretty bad in that room so the hardwood would be a good replacement I think.
I really would have liked the demo crew to do the work and save the boards but they were going to charge us extra on the job and we didn't want to pay for it so I decided to do it myself for free.
I used simple tools to pull up the boards, just a hammer and a few crow bars to pry up the nails.
I also used a skill saw to cut the boards at the end near where the new floor would start. I didn't need it to be perfect because the professionals would have to cut it again in the correct spot so its okay that my cut is a little wonky. I adjusted the blade to be just past the depth of the hardwood so as not to cut the floor below as well.
I started pulling up boards on one end and worked my way back towards the other.
The first few boards didn't come out easily and the tongue broke off several when I pulled them up. On many of the other boards the tongue cracked pretty bad but didn't come off completely, so my wife helped me glue those ones back together. They came up quite a bit easier as I moved away from the wall though and I was actually able to save a lot in near perfect condition.
At the end of it I had to cut off the nails and hammer them in flat so that they sit flush on the floor for next time.
My wife helped a lot with that part which made the work go a lot faster. She was a hammering machine!
It became a bit of an assembly line with me cutting the excess nail and my wife hammering it flat. We listened to a podcast to break up the monotony of the work.
The whole thing took us several days to complete.
Here's me near the beginning of the project when I was still in a good mood and feeling fresh. Later I was quite sore from being hunched over for hours, prying boards on my knees on the hard floor.
