Great Room Project, Monday 9/28

Day Two: Baseboards out.

Today’s task was to extract the wood baseboards. This step really can’t count as “Demolition”, since I needed to reuse pretty much all of the trim, which complicates matters somewhat. The baseboard trim was actually in two pieces: a basic 1”x6” rectangular board, topped with a piece of fancy milled trim. The guys who originally put in this trim got pretty happy with the nailer. These bits were really stuck in place!

Here are the tools: crowbars are good. Putty knives are good for breaking any paint seal. The big putty knife was good for protecting the wall while using the prybar, at least until it broke. I’ll blame it on one of the rabbits. Pliers for pulling out nails, hammer for whacking things in general.

It probably didn’t help that I still had the carpet in place, since that would have made prying from the bottom easier. But I hadn’t cleared the room of the big, heavy furniture pieces, and I figured it would make a fine drop cloth for painting.

Again, not a lot of drama in the end o’ the day photo. Just the same room without some wood bits. Whoopee. Yay, me.





The gold/orange/brown area on this wall is the test spot for the new paint. My local Lowe’s (My favorite place. I save hundreds of dollars there. Every week.) will sell you a mini-can of any color you want for $3. Deal.



Bruno says: “Hey – don’t blame ME for destroying your putty knife!”


I ended up breaking just one piece of the milled trim, but it was glue-able. I also had to glue a number of bigger chips that happen when you extract a nail from a hunk of finished wood. No big deal, either one.