Removing flooring made simple with the Gutster. Find out the quickest way to remove your floorboards.

For a fair few DIY or renovation projects, you’ll need to get underneath or entirely remove your floorboards. This could be to reach pipes or just to replace them. To minimise the risk of damaging your floorboards, you’ll need to follow this carefully. Most floorboards are laid in a tongue and groove fashion, meaning that they overlap to give a flush finish, but this means that when lifting one, you’re likely to lift the surrounding boards simultaneously.

• Floorboard Removal Tools:
• Chisel
• Gutster Flooring Bar
• PPE including safety gloves and goggles
• Circular Saw

Step 1: Clear the area and remove the skirting boards.
It may seem obvious, but make sure that the room is clear, including items on the wall; better to be safe than sorry! Next up, you’ll need to remove the skirting boards from the edges of the room, or you’ll have great difficulty removing floorboards attached to it. To do this, you can use your demolition bar by prying the prongs behind the skirting board and pulling away from the wall.

Step 2: Locate where you want to lift

The most accessible place to start lifting is to identify where the floorboards may have been previously lifted. You can do this by looking for an extra set of screws in the boards and removing them. Alternatively, you might spot a section of filler between two floorboards where they have been previously lifted. You can use your hammer and chisel and chip away at this to start the lifting process here.

If your floorboards have never been lifted before, there’s no need to fret; the process is simple. Locate the joist, the support of the floor, on the board by looking for the nails that fix the board together. Mark a line around 4 inches on either side of the nails. If you’re working with tongue and groove floorboards, you’ll need to use your circular saw to cut down the lengths of the floorboards in the gap to separate the tongue and groove from both sides. Make sure that you set the depth on your tool to the thickness of your floorboards before you do this, as you don’t want to cut into the joists. Take your time doing this cut, as if you’re looking to reuse the boards, you have less chance of damaging them and the surrounding floorboards.

Step 3: The first lift

Once you’ve gone along the sides of the floorboards, you can now cut along the line that you previously made. Once you’ve done this, grab your demolition bar and get lifting! Apply pressure directly under the cut you’ve just created and lift. Once you’ve loosened the nails, repeat this action on the side of the board, where you first cut.

Step 4: Removing the board

You’ll hear the last of the nails pull away from the joist and other floorboards, which means you can now lift the board with your hands. It’s important to note that the board will still have protruding nails within, so you need to be careful where you put your hands when doing this. Alternatively, some demolition bars, like the Gutster, have the functionality to allow you also to remove nails, which you can do now.

Step 5: Removing the rest of the floor

If you’re looking to save and reuse the boards, repeat the first four steps until you have finished the job. If that isn’t your plan, you can now take your demolition bar and go to town. Scoop the floorboards underneath the prongs and lift until the boards are removed.

Gutster Demolition Bars:

At Gutster Tools, our primary focus is creating quality tools that make working life easier, faster, and more effective. Our demolition bars are designed to suit a range of projects and requirements, suitable for professionals and novices alike.