If you want to spend a weekend remodeling part of your home, many times you’ll need to remove wood trim first. Whether you’re taking down a wall or sanding wood floors, you’ll need to remove any trim before you begin. This process isn’t as easy as it sounds; casing, molding, or baseboards can easily splinter and break if you’re not careful. Trim tends to be thin and made of softwood, which isn’t made to be taken out and reinstalled. However, you can accomplish this work without making a mess or wasting money if you know what steps to take.

Tools You’ll Need

To begin, you’ll need the correct tools, such as the following:

• Wood putty
• Pry bar
• Lineman’s pliers
• Needle-nose pliers
• Light hammer
• Wood wedge

Make sure you have these tools before you begin so that you don’t need to stop your work halfway to find the tools you need. Many hardware stores will have these supplies, and you can ask an employee if you need help finding a specific tool.

Score a Piece of Baseboard

To begin, cut a piece of baseboard the entire length of where it meets the wall. You can use a utility knife to cut any paint or caulk that has adhered to it. When you score this length where the two baseboards meet, you can prevent paper and paint from tearing from the drywall so that you won’t have a damaged surface. Use a metal putty knife 6 inches long to lightly work the area behind the baseboard so that you can start to loosen the material adhering the baseboard to the wall.

At the same time, you should pull in a forward motion to loosen the finishing nails and pins that are keeping the trim affixed to the wall. Pick one end of the baseboard to start on and delicately pry, going along the length of the trim until the piece is loose enough to come off the wall.

You’ll need to have patience when doing this step to avoid breaking the moldings, as releasing the baseboard will take some time to do. If you’re having difficulty placing the blade of the putty knife under the trim, try tapping the hammer’s handle gently so that the blade will sink in more.

Pull the Molding Free

At this point, you can try to pull the end of the trim loose away from the wall once the entire length is disconnected. Again, be careful so that you don’t accidentally damage another part of the wall, such as the adjoining wall or the door trim. In a kneeling position, slightly raise up and delicately and gently move the trim in a rocking motion to relax the trim on the part of the molding that’s tight between the corner baseboard next to it and the wall until the molding fully releases.

Label the Trim

Next, place a label or number on the lower part of the wall and the rear of the trim so that you can easily keep all the pieces in the correct order, mainly if you’ll be putting your boards back in their original places. Continue removing each piece the same way by going down the drywall and removing the adjoining pieces until all the parts you need have been removed. Take out the finishing nails from the trim you removed by using side cutter pliers.

Alternative Option: Pull Straight Outward

Another option when removing molding is to pull it straight and outward when you’re taking off the trim without taking out the nails first. Since nails have heads, you normally pull them out when you pull lumber out. However, trim works differently, as it’s attached with brads or finish nails. These brads or nails have small heads and are thin, so they don’t pull out as easily as nails attached to lumber. When you use any material, with the exception of medium density fiberboard, you can obtain traction on the trim by using a pry bar that’s thin and pulling the pry bar straight back to release the molding.

This effort will cause the trim to pull through the brads or nails and leave the fasteners still connected to the wall. The only potential issue is that some installers use construction or wood glue to make the trim stick, so if you find this arrangement is the case, the drywall paper will rip away with this method. Test a small section first to confirm.

Caulk is also placed on the tops of baseboards, outer parts of door and window trim, or sometimes on the back edge of the crown molding. Caulking is used so that gaps are covered to give a smoother appearance.

Tips to Stay Safe

If you need to use a larger tool to take out any trim that’s stubborn, such as a durable chisel or small crowbar, place a wide putty knife or broad knife between the wall and the trim to help you pry off the trim while protecting the surface of the drywall. You should always wear safety glasses when you’re doing a home renovation project such as this one so that your eyes will stay protected from any trim if it happens to snap into pieces.

You can easily remove floor moldings without breaking them when you follow this guide. Make sure you have the proper tools needed for this project before you begin to make your work easier. Visit your local hardware store to get any supplies you need and have them organized in the room you’ll be working in before you start.

While removing floor moldings is a relatively simple process, the main factor to keep in mind is that you need to have patience and know that the work may be slow going. Make sure that the moldings don’t break so that you can reinstall them after you’re done with your home project. Labeling the boards will allow you to more easily know which ones go back in what order when you’re replacing them. You’ll finish your project more quickly by using this technique.

Resources:

https://www.builddirect.com/blog/secret-design-weapons-floor-and-crown-moldings

https://www.builddirect.com/blog/this-weeks-wood-floor-mold-reducer-moldings

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/remove-baseboards-damaging-drywall-29807.html

https://www.thespruce.com/remove-trim-or-molding-without-breaking-1822783

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The purpose of molding is to cover edges, camouflage expansion spaces, and bridge surfaces where wood ends and other types of flooring begin, like tile or carpet. Engineered flooring often comes with matching trim, but for solid wood flooring, you’ll need to shop for these pieces. The last finishing step after the floor is completely installed is the trim. In order to avoid frustrating last-minute issues, plan for trim and molding in advance as part of the overall installation.

What Type of Trim Do I Need?

To determine what kind of trim you’ll need, consider the edges of the room and anything that meets the floor, for example installed cabinets, fireplaces, stairways, doorways, and transitions between floorings. Here is how different types of trim are used:

• Wood to tile or wood to wood: Usually, this calls for a T-molding, so named because it has a rounded top T shape. The top of the molding is slightly rounded and the stem on the bottom fits between the ends of two types of flooring roughly equal in height.
• Uneven levels: A reducer eliminates a raised edge if one floor surface is noticeably higher of lower than the other. Reducers can be one-sided, flush, bi-level or overlapping. Each type of reducer trim does the same thing, eases the transition between floors of different levels.
• Threshold: Threshold trim bridges the gap between the floor and a sliding glass door. This leaves an expansion gap in place, and can also connect wood floors to carpet. End cap or square nose molding may also be used for this purpose.
• Stairs: If your floor will end under the floating edge of stairs and require expansion room, you’ll need overlap stair nosing or bull nose trim. For stairs that end flush, use flush or square edge stair nosing.
• Baseboards: around the walls, trim will be necessary to cover the gaps left by expansion space. You can use decorative or plain baseboards, with quarter round or shoe edge molding at the bottom to conceal additional gaps.

Ways to Install Molding and Trim

• Baseboards and other trim may be attached to the wall every 16 inches on the studs using staples or finishing nails.
• Transitional T-moldings are usually glued in place to the subfloor. Reducer trims have a tongue and groove edge that attach to the last floorboard and overlap the edge of the next surface.Baseboards and other trim may be attached to the wall every 16 inches on the studs using staples or finishing nails.
• Overlap reducers and threshold transitional trims are commonly used with floating floors and with transitions to carpet. They overlap both edges and may be nailed or glued down.

General Tips for Installation

• Unless you plan to paint trim to match the walls, select trim that is as close in grain pattern and color to your flooring as possible, and select wood strips that match the trim with little variation to go around the perimeter of the walls.
• Like the flooring planks, moldings should be acclimated for 72 hours.
• Pre-drilling is highly recommended to avoid splitting and splintering when fastening with nails or staples.
• Start with the longest unbroken wall, usually the outside wall.
• When installing shoe edge or quarter round moldings, do not drive in nails or staples at a downward angle. It may interfere with the floor expansion area.
• Splice trim using miter cuts. For an unbroken look, the direction of the miter should be oriented with the long point away from the room’s main entryway, the same direction of your vision as you enter the room.

Special Circumstances

Doorways

It’s tempting to continue flooring through a doorway, but using a transition (T-molding) is usually a better option. Creating an exact fit is difficult, and using a molding allows a little extra expansion easement. If the flooring is floated, you must use a transition molding if the doorways is less than 6 feet wide.

Pipes, Vents, Cabinets and Other Fixed Objects

A general rule of thumb is to leave a 3/8” expansion gap around any fixed object and use moldings, pipe rings, or vent covers to conceal the gaps.

Raised Hearths

Transitions around fireplaces are often awkward. The most natural looking way to handle a raised hearth is to trim out an area around the hearth itself using an undercut saw with a diamond-tipped blade. Two cuts are required and this needs to be prepared before installing the floor. The first cut goes at the vertical height level of the floor and the second flush with the subfloor. Chisel the area between the two cuts for the flooring to slide between.

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