1925's Maple Tongue and Groove

[pureinsanity]

I installed several wood floors in my short career years of doing it. From Pergo, to solid oak, to several variations of other laminates. The one thing I never did was salvage any old flooring. If we were doing demo on a job wed destroy the floor and not try to salvage it.

I have a decent Maple floor that is original from 1925. It is coming out of the kitchen and tile is going in. I do not want to destroy the wood as I know you cannot find wood like it these days. However, I would like to salvage it and store it in case I decide to use it someday or sell it to someone who would love to reclaim its beauty.

Any experts out there on salvaging tongue and grove? I am thinking I should start on the tongue side and try to back the nails out and pull all the nails. Essentially the boards should pop out with ease (hopefully)

Anyone got any suggestions of have you tackled this on your own? what gave you success?

[ac777]

My Dad tore some oak t&g out of his living room, and I believe he did as you described, once you get the first one out, it shouldn't be too bad. i think that's a lot easier than trying to pull each nail, and less damaging.

[Steve Foss]

We've salvaged thousands of running feet of hardwood flooring, most of it maple from 1880 to 1930 vintage, but some white and red oak as well. We're very big into reuse of building materials and restoration of old homes.

You start at the tongue side and usually have to sacrifice the first row of flooring so you can bet a prybar under the rest of it.

Once you've got room for the prybar, you keep bumping it along from underneath to jar the nails loose from the subfloor. You can then pull the nails, making sure you don't put the hammer or prybar against the tongue/joint, but against the subfloor when pulling the nails.

Sometimes, however, when you pull a nail back out, some wood will come with it, and because of how big the nails are in hardwood floor and how tightly it's all nailed, it's usually much better with old floors to pull up the board completely, nails and all once it's jarred loose, and either pull the nails through to the underside and out using a heavy sliplock pliers or gently back them out by tapping on the points with a hammer. We generally prefer to pull them through with the sliplock because any wood that splinters will do it underneath the board and out of sight instead of on the finished side. I've seen people back nails out with the claw on a hammer and ruin whole lengths of flooring because the tongues tore out. Other times I've seen folks brace the hammer claw or prybar against the tongue and visible (top) joint when pulling nails, and that pretty much always scars the joint and make it really ugly when reinstalled.

You'll have to let the nails/wood tell you which of the two ways is best. The slower you go and the more you listen to the wood, the less will be damaged. It takes a fair bit of patience to do it thoroughly. Often, one nail will be better pulled out backwards and the next one will be better pulled through and out the underside.

Another option is to cut off the heads with a heavy nippers so the nails pull through more easily. Even though flooring/finish nails have small heads, it's a lot easier to pull them without damaging the wood when they are headless.

What you'll also often find is that the bottom of the boards have splintered a bit where the kick nailer drove the nails through. Those splintered areas often are raised, and in order to get the flooring board to lay flat upon reinstallation you have to gently remove the splintered wood.

And you'll typically lose some percentage to breakage. It's 90 years old, after all, and it's had a lot of time to shrink/swell with temp and humidity changes, which binds it to the nails, and the nails often have some rust on them and are hard to work with. Old brittle wood and rusty nails = slow going.

One likely advantage you have is that if it's maple from the '20s, it's usually 2 inch boards, or a bit wider, and it's easier to salvage wider flooring boards than the much narrower Victorian era hardwood.

It's a bit hard to explain with writing. Hope that helps. Good luck with the project!

As for reinstalling salvaged hardwood floor, well, that's a whole other topic.

[croixflats]

Steve you have a lot of good tips there.

This wont help any but every time I hear about reclaiming wood flooring I think about when I was a we lad and going into St.Paul with popps to salvage the maple wood flooring from the old post office. This stuff was 2"x6" tongue and groove maple hard wood flooring in lengths of 6' to 10'.All in great shape and hard as a rock to drive a nail through. We must have salvaged pert near 2500 sqft. I cringe now as we used the wood for fire wood to heat the house ,and man that stuff burned long and hot. I cant imagine how much that wood would be valued today.

[pureinsanity]

Guess at this point the boss(ol lady) doesn't want to reuse the flooring down the road so its just going to be tear out and save a few pieces in case I get creative with a project. The rest is going on the dumpster. I was hoping to salvage and resell it but sounds like there isn't a demand for it.

thanks for the tips anyway

If I had to guess id say there is about 280 Sq Feet. so its not much

[Steve Foss]

Guess at this point the boss(ol lady) doesn't want to reuse the flooring down the road so its just going to be tear out and save a few pieces in case I get creative with a project. The rest is going on the dumpster. I was hoping to salvage and resell it but sounds like there isn't a demand for it.

thanks for the tips anyway

You're right when it comes to market. If it's really clean you might get some takers, but there's a lot of work for the small financial return. On the tips, hey, no big deal. There'll be lots of other folks who read this thread, and the tips may come in handy for some of them.

Treated carefully and with the tongues and grooves ripped off, it makes excellent picture frames, and the mitered corners won't shrink away from each other because it's already completely seasoned. If there's any with a fiddleback or bird's eye pattern, that would definitely be worth saving for projects. Back then, some small percentage of most maple flooring, even the standard grades, had unique grain.

Croix, hard maple 2x6 T&G would be worth BIG BUCKS today!

[pureinsanity]

I was thinking about saving some for frames :0

Also, I just hung some cabinets in the basement that im going to use for my workshop / rod building set up.

There is a nasty work bench down there that's old, heaving and very crooked. I plan on taking the bench out below the cabinets, putting different wood on it, and well now making a Maple work top for it

[swamptiger]

Some of that would make a nice cutting board or a butcher block.

Another way that works good with finish nails is to take a punch and just drive the nail all the way through before you remove the board.

[pureinsanity]

I thought about using it for a butcher block rolling island as well.

I got the main part of the kitchen done last night. Got two entry ways to do now. I think I might salvage that stuff for a butcher block.

I had to lose about the first 3-5 runs as they nailed them right through the top of the board. After that it was all in the tongue.

I was able to start tongue side, pry up a bit, and than push with the bar away from the other tongue. I than used my foot to keep kicking and I was able to kick the board out so not much prying was needed period.

After salvaging about 30 boards i realized how long it was going to take me to get the floor out doing it carefully. After that I switched gears to fly and pry.

Had the floor out in 2 hours hauled away and cleaned up in 1 more additional hour. I managed to step on a weak spot on the sub floor and almost went to the basement. So had to add some scrap wood to the floor so I didn't do it again.

[PurpleFloyd]

Some good tips in this thread. The one thing I might be able to add to anyone who is looking at reclaiming a floor is that wrecking the tongue isn't always the end of the world either and there are things you can do to save the flooring even if the tongues get trashed.

You can take the planks to the table saw and rip the tongue completely off and then run the plank through a shaper or router table and cut a new tongue on it. The result will be a narrower plank so you would not be able to mix and match with undamaged planks but you could alternate rows and very few people would notice.

[pureinsanity]

And this weekend I am going to attempt to put in tile by myself LOL.

I have a feeling im going to be exchanging time words with the tile:)

[BoxMN]

Don't forget the knee pads! I thought I wouldn't need them for my small bathroom, but I am old, and ended up with balled up towels under my knees, haha!

[pureinsanity]

with the amount of flooring and nail pulling ive done in the last month or so I don't think I can even feel my knees... Well except when a nail went into my knee.

[IamZombie]

Some good tips in this thread. The one thing I might be able to add to anyone who is looking at reclaiming a floor is that wrecking the tongue isn't always the end of the world either and there are things you can do to save the flooring even if the tongues get trashed.

You can take the planks to the table saw and rip the tongue completely off and then run the plank through a shaper or router table and cut a new tongue on it. The result will be a narrower plank so you would not be able to mix and match with undamaged planks but you could alternate rows and very few people would notice.

Or you could cut a groove and glue in a new tongue, if you're motivated.

[PurpleFloyd]

[mn_bowhunter]

Another option to remove nails that works good if the wood is breaking is to take a grinder and knock the exposed part of the nail off. I've done that a few times and it works ok. Others I know have used a table saw to cut them off, but I don't have the cojones for that after getting hit by a tooth once. It looks like there's mastic on the boards, be careful it may contain asbestos.

[pureinsanity]

Or I could take it to the dump and save a few pieces and burn them this spring or summer for all the hard work I put into everything

There is asbestos all over in this house. At this point I do not even care anymore. I am doomed.

[delcecchi]

If all that stuff was as deadly as claimed, we never would have been born because it would have killed our parents. They smoked, drank, used materials with asbestos, sprayed DDT and clordane, burned leaded gas and survived.