How To Remove Baseboard

hi I'm Shannon from Houston Perez calm in this today's video I just want to show you how I would remove baseboard without damaging the drywall so we've got a typical set up here we've got a painted baseboard drywalled walls and a lot of times people will get carried away with taking off the baseboard and they'll end up putting holes through the walls so I'm just gonna show you a couple little tips here and tricks to do that to remove that baseboard without hopefully causing any damage so one of the main things you want to do start with is get rid of anything else that's going to be in the way in this case we've got a cold air register there we already had taken the screws out so we got that out of the way and you can see we've got baseboards along this this end of the room that we want to remove so in the case of the the baseboard itself a lot of times when it's a paint grade baseboard this top edge is gonna have a small bead of caulking in there and then it was painted or even if there isn't caulking sometimes when people paint the baseboards or the walls over years you get a buildup of paint in this corner and they basically stick the two together and if you just go ahead and try to pry that off you usually end up damaging the drywall above it and that's no good if you're reusing the same kind of baseboard or the same height now you've got these damaged spots you're gonna have to fix up that you can't cover so what I would normally do is just take a utility knife the sharp blade and cut right in down in this joint to cut either the paint that's got the two glued together or the caulking whichever your case might be or it could be both so you just want to kind of cut right around there all the way in this case we're reusing the baseboard a later date so we're trying not to damage the baseboard either you can see I just kind of get the blade right down in there carefully and try to cut right through everything all the way around I'm gonna come around here so okay so we've done that to start with so hopefully we don't get any tearing of the paper off the drywall now I've got a bit of a selection of different bars here for the most part usually this one bar that you see me used for almost everything is the only bar I'm going to need but sometimes you're gonna need something a little heavier so to start with your baseboards you'll notice is still quite tight to the wall so you need to kind of get this nice thin slim bar down and in there in that joint that we just cut between the trim and the drywall just to kind of get things opened up and just pry gently that's kind of a bad spot to start because these corners are probably glued together as well I'm just gonna kind of gently pry there and actually I broke that one will get this corner started off you can see that the joints here were actually glued together which is pretty common these small pieces it's kind of hard to get started with so all these chunks will come off you may end up the odd spot where the nails might stay in the walls like that so you with they're just Brad nails it's pretty easy with a pair of pliers to get them started and pulling off pulling out like that you can see how long that was this is where the drywall face was so you just want to start with them you can see here we've got a plastic corner bead let's hidden up behind here it's not really covered down here so it's pretty susceptible to damage and you could crack this up here so you want to just kind of put a piece of thin wood or something there to sort of cry against so that you don't you hopefully don't crack couple these corners okay so we'll get those nails out as you go where you'll kind of forget about them so then we got this little guy and this one will just be likely glued we'd have to we may have to recut these corners no they're not coming off and good oh maybe this one's gonna come now no so you can see again left nails behind I'm just getting a hold of the end of it with my pliers and then twisting as I go up against this plywood okay okay so we finally got to the piece what if you get two so I'm gonna deal with it as if like I couldn't get in access at this end maybe we're working in a corner or whatever so same thing I just want to push that bar down in behind there but you don't want to skit into too quickly above this the top of the bass border you're gonna damage that that drywall surface and there might be in the lr8 here in the very end so I'm just prying against the baseboard and against the drywall that's hidden in behind hidden in behind the baseboard and I'll show you here in a minute the little scuff mark you leave but it's below the the baseboard mark now another way to do that is once you get it kind of loosened off a bit you can use your scrap again and the other end of the bar and you're praying against the strap so that your bar doesn't actually punch a hole through that drywall once you get it started you can usually pull it off by hand and this is generally what you're left with a lot a lot of times most of the nails are going to pull out off with the baseboard so you're left with this porcupine of a piece of baseboard and I like to get rid of those right away and so just throwing them in a pile and then they're scratching everything and you're you're poking your fingers with them or whatever so I'll pull all those nails out right away as I go so I'm just simply grasping them with the pliers twisting the pliers and pulling them out through the back not out through the front I'll get them all out of the way okay so then also as I go I want to have some kind of labeling system so when if I'm putting these same baseboards back on I know where each piece came from so I mean you can put the room if you're doing multiple rooms you might want to put you know bedroom and then start a numbering or a lettering system so you know where they go so you want to mark the piece that you took off in this case I'm putting number one and you want to mark on the wall below like where it's going to cover with the corresponding number so when you're sorting through this big stock baseboards that you wanted to reuse it's a little bit easier to sort out what went where and where it came from and if you do it as you take them off you don't forget to do it so okay so we've got that piece off we've got one nail over here that's still sticking out if it didn't come off the baseboard so just like around the corner there we're just gonna get a hold of it pull the note that one was just in the drywall so it came out easy okay so that's kind of one thing now I mean I I can show you taking all these off but it's really the same process you just want to pry and keep moving your way along what I'd like to do with this one piece is just show you everything that I did so I pulled it off I've labeled it I pulled the nails out but now I'm still left with these little tearaway spots on the back where the old nails came out and it's nice to kind of deal with those at the same time right now - so this is all cleaned up so I just take a little rasp and I just doesn't take much just kind of knock off those those high points so they're flat again that way when you go to put this back on the Wallace it's nice and tight back against the wall and you don't have those little bumps on the back kind of holding you away another thing that you might find these ones aren't bad at all but if this was cocked on with quite a big goopy bead of caulking there might be some on here that you might want to take off so a bar like this is pretty good because you can just kind of carefully scrape along there I don't know if you can see that there is a little bit on this one and as I kind of pull off it just kind of peels that a little bit off now in this case these ones weren't bad so it's not a big deal but sometimes that's a big amount your knife even will work you can kind of do the same thing with the knife carefully so that's that's your piece of trim now on the wall you might have a little Ridge like we have here and that's that caulking or it could be paint as well and same thing I just want to tear carefully take my knife or my bar I mean and just kind of pry that off speak that off so I don't have that ugly ridge right there here's the couple spots where there was some damage from my bar that's below the line that the baseboard without it's on it's just kind of work that along right now then that way it's all ready to go when you when you're ready to put your baseboards back on so that kind of showed you everything so the basic stuff you're gonna need is what I had here and if you're gonna use this bigger bar the reason I grabbed it is sometimes what you need to do is you do all your cutting everything and maybe you can't get this a thin bar like this maybe can't even get it in there because it's so tight sometimes what you can do is just take a bigger bar like this and go underneath get it under the baseboard and you can kind of pry up and get this loose I don't know if you noticed how before this was tight now by doing that I've created a bit of extra room there and now I can get my bar in there and easier okay so that's what the bigger bar is for you don't always need it usually the small bar is all you need but just have a few little blocks of scrap with you to put against the wall to protect things and you should be good to go so that's just some little tips and tricks for removing your baseboard without creating a whole bunch of extra work by damaging your drywall so hopefully you liked that video and if you did we'd appreciate if you click the thumbs up down below you can also subscribe to our channel if you haven't done that before and by clicking the subscribe button obviously down there if you want to get notifications after that click the little bell that shows up and other than that I'm glad that you came here to watch house improvements and hope to see you next time

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 196,330

Rating: 4.9666538 out of 5

Keywords: baseboard, trim, remove, removal, how to, diy, home, house, do it yourself, casing, base, board, damaged, replace, paint, fix, improvements, reno, demo, mopboard, skirting, frieze, freeze, moulding, wood, drywall, damage, pull

Id: 3zyynAkUkXg

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 29 2020