How to Remove Tongue and Groove Flooring Without Damage! Hint: It's Counter-Intuitive!!!

How do I remove them when they’re glued down?

I hope that was your house, that was way too hard compared to drywall!

My man, use a dead blow on that pry bar and save your hearing. My ears are ringing just thinking about it.

Wait, the VancouverDrywaller does carpentry now?

It's tedious work. I don't regret saving some of the pieces that I pulled.They came in handy years later to repair some damage spots

When we aren’t saving the hardwood for a re install we set out circular saw to the depth of the wood and cut sections 4 feet wide and use a roofing shovel to get it up, used to do a lot of hardwood removal for insurance company’s

Great video!

Coincidentally, I was just experimenting with lifting tongue & groove overlay flooring. Total disaster as not only is it nailed, it’s also glued. There goes the plan of recycling. Now I’m thinking of routing them and wondering how many routers I’ll burn out while I’m doing it.

I appreciate you sharing firsthand knowledge , so many hacks are out there doing lousy work never getting good at it.

Its alot quicker to just circular saw between the joist and replace it all. Might be cheaper than the labor of gently demoing.

Curious why the hardwood was removed. Is that mold on the sub floor?

We have very different definitions of gently

I use a sawsall and cut off the nails under the tongue. Works great

That's a an extremely long board! Some of the 2-1/4"w red oak boards I saved were 14' long. The house was built in 1947

I recently did a 3-inch wide solid hardwood demolition and used the Honey Badger demolition fork, 4 pronged 56" handle. It worked better than expected and even though I didn't need to salvage anything I was able to get about 90% of it as reusable. It was just the first few boards that got damaged the most. I highly recommend the tool!

A match and some lighter fluid works well also … 😂

As a former hardwood floor guy, this is correct. Especially if you are trying to save the flooring.

It's a hell of a lot quicker when you don't have to worry about damaging the floor that's being removed. I hate when I have to do "gentle demo"

Also wear glasses… There is always a risk

Put on some hearing protection my friend. Take it from someone who has worked in construction and fire alarms for ~30 years.

Another way is cut some bad boy wedges out of 2×4 helps minimize damage from demo 😎

I found the best way is to make a bunch of long wedges and hammer them under the boards

Great tip. Thank you!

Why don’t you just put durabond over it

Some Ben asmr lol

Why did you want to save them?

def pro tip

👍