Thread: removing cypress flooring

Ouch.

How much time have you got?

Best option to preserve the boards might be to first punch the nails right down.

Next best is to butcher the first and then pry up the rest gently with a pinch bar. Get a long one so you get ride both points on the joist to minimise the lifting angle.

There's one bar that is pretty flat and thin at the end with a short 90 degree section at the other end. Good for what you're looking at.

Mickey

Whereabouts in Australia are you located? Maybe a nearby 'volunteer' or two would be willing to help you take up the floor if there was some free flooring in it for them?

Hi Mike
The only successfull way that I know is to weld a "U" onto a suitably sized length of pipe say 40mm OD X 2000mm long (probably 2 units would be best cause then you can have one and a mate could use the other).
The method is... pullout a floor board the whole length of the room(Just butcher this one) then move say 1.5 to 2mts down and remove another line of board. You have now exposed the joists. Cut through all the joists along this exposed line. Slip the "U" on the pipe over the cut side of the joists and lever them away from their contact with the flooring. If this is too hard to lever with 2 people you will have to shorten the length of joist you are levering. Yes you are destroyng the joist but this is the way demolishers do it to reclaim the boards.
Cypress being cypress, as it ages it gets dry and brittle and to try to lever up one board at a time will usually split the top side of the groove off the board
Kind regards and best of luck Rod

Originally Posted by chambezio

Hi Mike
The only successfull way that I know is to weld a "U" onto a suitably sized length of pipe say 40mm OD X 2000mm long (probably 2 units would be best cause then you can have one and a mate could use the other).
The method is... pullout a floor board the whole length of the room(Just butcher this one) then move say 1.5 to 2mts down and remove another line of board. You have now exposed the joists. Cut through all the joists along this exposed line. Slip the "U" on the pipe over the cut side of the joists and lever them away from their contact with the flooring. If this is too hard to lever with 2 people you will have to shorten the length of joist you are levering. Yes you are destroyng the joist but this is the way demolishers do it to reclaim the boards.
Cypress being cypress, as it ages it gets dry and brittle and to try to lever up one board at a time will usually split the top side of the groove off the board
Kind regards and best of luck Rod

i agree with you mate , however i mentioned in here once that cypress gets brittle with age and copped a flurry of disagreement so we,ll see what happens .in my opinion second hand cypress is not worth the trouble , makes good kindling though

If you go for the chainsaw approach be careful of wires and pipes, tends to bugger the blade or you if they are live.

Do the boards creak badly at the moment? We tore up the living room floor in my parents, as they were sick of the creaking, a lot of the boards themselves were split, and unrecoverable.

I recovered a stack of flooring from an old house a couple of years back without having to cut any of them. It depends on your access to the floor cavity though.

Removed all of the skirting from the room, then go under the house and lever up the first few boards from underneath. Once you have a couple of feet of gap you can pull the rest up from inside the room.

If time is a factor, rip along a few boards with a circular saw at intervals about 1.5m apart, then cut through the joints and pull the whole section of floor out through a door or window. It's very quick and you can simply knock the joists off the boards outdoors with a sledge hammer, then knock the nails out backwards.

Hi Mikey

A little concerned by the advice that you also remove the joists - why????

Advice of either sacrificing first two boards or starting underneath is good. Once you start jemmying individual boards it helps if you have two or three guys with pinchbars working in synchro.

Its one of those jobs that is hard to start, then fairly easy.

Good luck

Cheers

Graeme

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

A little concerned by the advice that you also remove the joists - why????

*If* the house is being demolished it doesn't matter, and it can be quicker and easier.

Pinch bars tend to damage the boards.
Get hold of a dedicated floor board lifter - look around in tool hire places.

Also, don't knock the nails back through the surface, you'll chip the holes out like crazy. Get a good set of nail pullers and pull them out from the back.
Good luck with it.

thanks for all your replies and hints.

i'm not demolishing the house, I need to lift the floor boards as part of a renovation and I don't have under floor accesss.

sounds like it might be worthwhile hiring some floor board lifters.

Floorboard lifters are available from most DIY stores from about 20 Dollars.

Regards
Phil
Boards Lifter / Board Lifters From MDP Handling