Salvaging oak flooring

[Julia]

Has anyone ever salvaged 3 inch oak tongue and groove flooring to use
again in another location? My circa 1850 hewed log home had oak
flooring laid over its original flooring in 1945, and we'd like to
restore it and use the oak elsewhere. How can we pull it up without
destroying it?

It appears that they laid a framing of 2X4s back in 1945, and nailed the
oak tongue and groove to it. Would a recip saw work, do you suppose, to
cut the nails to that framing? Or is there something else?

Thanks!

My neighbour salvaged a lot of flooring, and you pretty well have to use a nail set to drive the nails down in oder to lift the flooring.You can use a prybar but it breaks a lot of flooring in the process

[CraftyDiva]

You may lose the first run of boards, but once those are off, you can just use a prybar and do the job.

I think it would depend on how the flooring was put down. I just removed a small section of tongue and grove oak flooring in an 1890 farmhouse that was put down in the 1950’s. Getting the flooring up was very difficult and to remove it without damage would have been near impossible. The flooring was toe nailed using square nails every several inches through the grove into the sub floor below. If your flooring is like this, you would need to cut the flooring up into squares and remove it with the sub-flooring to salvage it. Will probably not be cost effective. Why are you removing the oak flooring? You can have it sanded and refinished and it would look just like new. Oak wears like boiler iron and should last many years. If the flooring beneath your oak it is wide pine, I can tell you that it looks nice but it is not as durable as oak.

[Julia]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Why are you removing the oak flooring?

It's the wrong period for a hewn log room, plus it raised the floor 2 1/2 inches, playing havoc with the hearth of the stone walk-in fireplace.

If you could see it you'd understand....

And the flooring underneath it is oak, too.

But thanks, everyone.