Ever use salvaged flooring? It looks nice bundled in the store, but there’s a lot of work that goes into getting it. Take a walk in the steel-toe boots of our field crew during a floor strip-out.
First, the field crew members figure out which way the flooring’s tongues and grooves latch together. Then, strip by strip, they pull up the flooring with a hammer and flat bar, as Brad did with this oak flooring at a water-front home in Madrona April 6. Not so easy on the back. It took two people about 30 minutes to pull up this room’s floor.
At the end of the process, the flooring is in unwieldy piles, with nails sticking out. Here begins the more tedious work.
The next step is to remove all of the nails from the flooring. If you’re lucky enough to have a hand-held denailer, the work goes much faster. It kicks the nails out of the wood with the pull of a trigger, as Pat is showing here. If you don’t have one, or if the nails don’t come all the way out with the gun, you’ve got to pull them out with nippers or pliers.
Finally, the field crew bundles four equal-length pieces of flooring, measures them and prices them. The next thing you know, they’re available for you to purchase at Second Use, free of any back pain!
