I pulled up what I thought was lanoleum, but was actually lanoleum on top of plywood. It revealed my hardwood floors, but had small nails tacked everywhere in the floors. There are probably over 4000 nails in the floor with heads that a normal hammers claw can barely grip. I’ve been pulling them out one by one, but is taking forever. Does anyone have a simplier solution, one less time consuming?
I am going to sand and refinish the hardwood floors, so I can’t drive them in. Any suggestions would be awesome! Thanks!!
Use a small pair of vise grips. Grip the head and roll the vise grip onto the top jaw. This will remove the nail. But Sorry, it’s gonna take time no matter what you do.
Don’t ‘pull’ the nail, they will snap off and then you have bigger problems. You have to use leverage to remove them.
I took up some carpet and found the same issue. It really was a matter of a pair of pliers and patience. Sit down, get comfy and start pullin’.
I tried a lot of different things before I settled for the pliers. Don’t waste your time getting creative, just yank ‘em out.
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Use a small pair of vise grips. Grip the head and roll the vise grip onto the top jaw. This will remove the nail. But Sorry, it’s gonna take time no matter what you do.
Don’t ‘pull’ the nail, they will snap off and then you have bigger problems. You have to use leverage to remove them.
References :
Ahh but you can drive them in!
Just use a nail set and drive them below the surface. Then use a wood filler that absorbs stain or if stain is not used the filler should match as closely as possible to the floor color after sanding.
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the best way too it is get a pair of diag. pliers and start pulling. there is nothing like a good looking floor pull the nailes out. it will take time but it is worth it
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some options:
redo your floors with new wood
pound down the nails… the sander disks will get chewed up some but the nails will be sanded down, you could set them but this would take a while too; you could cut them off with a recip saw and pound in whats left
replace just the boards with nails in them
use vice grips to pull out the nails: favorite answer
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You have a LOT of work ahead of you, and there are several good suggestions already, so I am going to skip ahead and save you from asking how to get rid of the stains left aound the nailholes.
Get oxalic acid powder from a hardware store and make a paste of it to apply over the stained nailholes. Leave it until it dries and sweep it up. If that is not quite enough treatment, use more on the next ones. A little experimenting should let you know how much to use and just how wet to make it.
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