plea for help

[Rachel]

I hope someone will be able to help me. My family recently moved into an old house and discovered that there was hardwood flooring throughout under the carpet and linoleum. Taking up the carpet was easy, but the linoleum is proving difficult. It, of course, is glued to pressboard which tears up easily but leaves in the floor the nails which held the pressboard down. They look like little cut out L’s, and the tab-like part at the top breaks off if you try to use a hammer or wonderbar on them. The sides of the nails are grooved (and all of these grooves are under the surface of the floor), the nails are old and brittle, and the floor is very hard. I have visited flooring shops and get the feeling that I am the first person in the history of the world ever to try to pull up linoleum. Does anyone know how to get those little nails up? I would appreciate any help. Thanks, Rachel

[JT]

Rachel, one way to pull nails after the head breaks
off is with a nail puller. It’s kind of hard to
describe, but it has jaw that grip the shank harder
the harder you pull. Usually the way it is used is
by setting the jaws on either side of a flush set
nail head then useing integral slide hammer to
drive the jaws into the wood and under the head.
You can use them to pull a headless nail, but if
the nail is rusty and/or the wood very hard, they
may just bite a piece of the nail off. They cost
about $40, so be sure you can return it if it doesn’t
work for you.
Another option might be to just drive the headless
nails in then set them deeply with a nail set.

[jenni]

Instead of pulling up the nails get a nail set used for hammering in nails on finished trim and hammer down the nails then find a wood putty that would match and fill in the holes, you will not be able to notice there were once nails there.

[Michelle Adams]

We recently moved into an old house and began remodeling it. When we pulled up the old vinyl floor we descovered that the adhesive was next to impossible to remove. The vinyl that we removed was placed on top of an old type of tile, thin but sturdy, we are going to lay new vinyl on top of this. Sanding it will work, however the mess and the time involved is extensive. We need to remove this before we can replace the vinyl. Any suggestions?

[Author]

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