Advice? - salvaging oak flooring

[cpw]

Oh wise ones-

We are almost done moving Mom & Dad into their new digs , which means that the demolition on the old house is coming soon .

I want to TRY to salvage at least some of the oak floor boards. I THINK it's T&G, so I'm presuming it's toe-nailed. Any advice? Recommended tools?

I'm thinking of starting at the cold air return because I can get under the ends of a few boards.

[Gotcha6]

Almost all oak flooring sold is t & g. Salvaging will be a challenge at best. Try & figure out which end they finished on & work your way back into it prizing against the tongue side and at the bottom of the board. On really old homes it will be nailed entirely with cut nails. If it's nailed with a flooring nailer the last few rows could still be cut nailed because it's hard to swing a flooring hammer that close. Get a gorilla bar or crowbar & a good long pincer type nail puller to pull the nails on through. Don't try to back them out. Pry against a floor joist whenever possible. The subfloor will flex & possibly break. When reinstalling, avoid nailing near an old nail hole and BE SURE THERE ARE NO NAILS IN A PIECE BEFORE YOU CUT IT!
GOOD LUCK!

[Ray Martin]

Charles,

Not sure what you want to do with the flooring, or any other salvagte material, but you might check with a deconstruction group. It's out of the way for the local affiliate, but the Wake county chapter of Habitat for Humanity has a decon group; flooring is just one of the things they will salvage. I think the closest affiliate to you is Asheville.

Ray

[Nativespec]

You could cut the nails with a sawzall.

David

[Gotcha6]

Nailed properly, oak flooring will be nailed <16" o.c. For 2-1/2" oak flooring this come back at >5 nails per square foot. If it's old 1-3/4" flooring, even more - and it's likely nailed with cut nails. I don't think I could afford the blades to cut the former & couldn't find a blade to cut the latter - but it's worth a try.

[Nativespec]

They make diamond coated blades.

[cpw]

Originally Posted by Gotcha6

Almost all oak flooring sold is t & g. Salvaging will be a challenge at best. Try & figure out which end they finished on & work your way back into it prizing against the tongue side and at the bottom of the board. On really old homes it will be nailed entirely with cut nails. If it's nailed with a flooring nailer the last few rows could still be cut nailed because it's hard to swing a flooring hammer that close. Get a gorilla bar or crowbar & a good long pincer type nail puller to pull the nails on through. Don't try to back them out. Pry against a floor joist whenever possible. The subfloor will flex & possibly break. When reinstalling, avoid nailing near an old nail hole and BE SURE THERE ARE NO NAILS IN A PIECE BEFORE YOU CUT IT!
GOOD LUCK!

Dennis,

Thanks for all the info.

[cpw]

Originally Posted by Ray Martin

Charles,

Not sure what you want to do with the flooring, or any other salvage material, but you might check with a deconstruction group. It's out of the way for the local affiliate, but the Wake county chapter of Habitat for Humanity has a decon group; flooring is just one of the things they will salvage. I think the closest affiliate to you is Asheville.

Ray

Ray,

I have some water and pet damaged oak flooring in my own house that needs to be replaced. Not sure if the floor boards will be compatible. but I won't need a lot - maybe 10-15 sq. ft. If it comes up easy , with a little investment in a metal detector, once I have a planer, I've got FREE WOOD.

[Steve W]

I just did this back in late 2004 in my 1927 bungalow in MA. The wood was standard 2" oak T&G installed with cut nails.

I carefully pried up each board with a "flat bar" (I think one of the trade names for similar tools is "Wonderbar.") and tapped the nails out after getting each board up. They come out easily when the wood is dry, and they also pry up easier when everything is dry (such as now -- during the low-humidity time of year). You have to be careful around each butt joint and just work on prying up the whole "course" at a time before trying to separate the individual pieces.

The old wood is generally of better quality than the mass-market products offered today -- partially because the wood came from older-growth trees.

BTW, you can easily mill tongues and grooves into the ends if you need to cut any of the pieces due to damage, etc.

I re-laid this flooring (had to remove around some old fire damage that was all covered with W-W carpet) with new flooring mixed in and the whole lot sanded and stained with Golden Oak stain to get a better match between new and old. It came out well (I'll have to post pics later).

Steve

[cpw]

Originally Posted by Steve W

I just did this back in late 2004 in my 1927 bungalow in MA. The wood was standard 2" oak T&G installed with cut nails.

I carefully pried up each board with a "flat bar" (I think one of the trade names for similar tools is "Wonderbar.") and tapped the nails out after getting each board up. They come out easily when the wood is dry, and they also pry up easier when everything is dry (such as now -- during the low-humidity time of year). You have to be careful around each butt joint and just work on prying up the whole "course" at a time before trying to separate the individual pieces.

The old wood is generally of better quality than the mass-market products offered today -- partially because the wood came from older-growth trees.

BTW, you can easily mill tongues and grooves into the ends if you need to cut any of the pieces due to damage, etc.

I re-laid this flooring (had to remove around some old fire damage that was all covered with W-W carpet) with new flooring mixed in and the whole lot sanded and stained with Golden Oak stain to get a better match between new and old. It came out well (I'll have to post pics later).

Steve

Steve,
That's encouraging. Thanks a bunch.

[Steve W]

Just a couple of other things I thought of after posting:

If there were gaps in the flooring when it was down, you may have build-up of finish in there. You can either scrape it to get perfectly-tight joints or leave it and the floor will look like it has some years on it.

I like the old look so didn't worry about it unless there was "excessive" buildup of finish. A painter's scraper lightly along each edge gets rid of any dirt or sludge that got down there.

It really is a lot less work than it sounds like. Once you get your rhythm pulling it up, it really goes fast!

A 10 x 12 room @ $3.00 sq ft will cost you almost $400 in material costs for new material. That's using "mainstream" clear unfinished flooring from the BORG.

I just think the old stuff also looks better.

[Ray Martin]

Charles,

I stopped by a decon site not far from here where my Habitat friends had just finished pulling up several rooms of oak t & g flooring. They tell me you should use a number of Wonderbars (flat pry bar). Hammer the bar under the tongue side, push the bar toward the board to be pulled, then pull back away from the board being pulled. They showed me the results... they will sell most of the material at the ReStore. Even with very old, rather brittle wood, they were able to save most of it.

Ray

[cpw]

Originally Posted by Ray Martin

Charles,

I stopped by a decon site not far from here where my Habitat friends had just finished pulling up several rooms of oak t & g flooring. They tell me you should use a number of Wonderbars (flat pry bar). Hammer the bar under the tongue side, push the bar toward the board to be pulled, then pull back away from the board being pulled. They showed me the results... they will sell most of the material at the ReStore. Even with very old, rather brittle wood, they were able to save most of it.

Ray

Ray,

Thanks for the legwork.

[Steve W]

Pics, as promised.

What I had was sound oak flooring, with a rather large piece that had been taken out, covered by particle board (!) and covered up with w/w carpeting. I knew there was something weird going on under the carpet, but I had to pull the rug up to find out what!

There had been a small fire in the living room -- probably a Christmas tree, judging by where it was but maybe started by a candle. Embers must have popped off, as there were burn marks 8 feet away in some places. I had to patch some and was able to sand away others.

Over in the dining room, there was the old oak flooring plus evidence that the dining room/kitchen wall had been moved and that there had been a built-in hutch in the dining room -- thus an area with maple (kitchen), oak (dining room) and subfloor (built-in).

In order to make it look decent, I had to pull up the flooring in the living room out past the fire damage, into the dining room pas where pieces had been removed, then reinstall everything. Of course, I was about 150 sf short of flooring.

The first shot shows where I tore up the particle board in the living room. The second shot shows the flooring trifecta. The third shot shows the dining room after I finished the old floor. It came out nice.

[Steve W]

Here are some more,showing where the new BORG oak went in, and the dining room before sanding. It blended in a lot better after the sanding and staining. The only way you could really tell was that the new flooring fit together a lot tighter. If I was to do it again, I would mix the flooring randomly as it would have hid easier.
I thought I had taken a closeup of the patch area but apparently I did not. I cut a straight line across, put one piece of old flooring all the way across (about 7 feet), then ran shorter old flooring on the other side that ran in the same orientation as all the rest of the floor (so that there was one piece that was perpendicular). You can barely make it out.
Bottom line here is that you can get a really nice floor from reusing the old stuff!