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I've got a really interesting challenge for you, should you wish to accept it. You've gone ahead
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and taken a piece of trim down in your house, maybe like this one, and for some reason you
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want to reuse it. That happens very frequently. Maybe it's a piece of chair rail, baseboard
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or a door jamb type trim material. Well, the problem is, as you can see, on the back side
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after you pull it off, you have all these nails that are sticking out. Well, how do you get these
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nails out? Well, typically what most people do is simply take a hammer and just beat them from the
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back side back through the wood. Huge mistake. What happens when you do that, nine times out of ten
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is that the head of the finish nail blasts out large chunks of wood on the face of the wood
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There's two or three really easy ways to get those finish nails out without having to damage the wood
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and you're going to do it from the back side. The first thing you should go ahead and use
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is go ahead and use a hammer And you want to get a newer hammer because the hammerheads actually have really nice machined edges at the claw end of the hammer and they will grab onto the nail
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You slide it down pretty rapidly. It grabs on, and you just pull the nail backwards out through the wood
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That's really an effective way. Another tool to use is go ahead and try a simple hacksaw
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Just go ahead and put the blade as close as possible to the backside of the wood, saw through the nail, and bingo, it just pops right out
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Once again, you'll leave the head of the nail in the wood, but who cares? You'll never be able to see it
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Another handy tool to use to make sure that you pull out the smaller finished nails
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is what we call a linesman's pliers. This is a tool that an electrician uses to cut wire
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What you do is you grab the nail on the backside. It works great with little four-penny nails
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And you twist the linesman's pliers, and out comes the nail through the backside of the wood
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It's really simple to save that molding, and really, it's expensive. So salvage as much as you can
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be a recycler of lumber. If you want to discover more home improvement tips go to askthebuilder.com
