For full disclosure, I'm not planning on doing any of this anytime soon, this is just a concept discussion. The floor will remain intact until we do a kitchen remodel at some point in the future. I started thinking about this because more rooms are about to have flooring installed adjacent to the existing hardwood.

The background:

We bought a house about 2 years ago, with solid 3/4" maple flooring in 1/3 or 1/2 of the first floor area. It's over a crawlspace with 3/4 plywood subfloor, and I can't tell if there is a moisture barrier or anything that I can see when I remove the floor registers. I think it's a nail down because of the top nailing at the thresholds, etc. Not floating, that's for sure.

The planks are cupped slightly, enough to see across the surface in daylight, and enough to feel when walking on. The surface is fairly scarred in many areas from the previous owners, which is actually nice because we don't really care about damaging it further with shoes and dirt. I don't remember if the cupping changes seasonally, and don't know if it is related to crawlspace moisture, etc.

So the annoying part: The install drives me completely nuts. Not sure if this was a professional job or not, but I assume it was because of some of the cutting skill involved.

The baseboards weren't removed, and the quarter round trick was used to cover the edge. Not good for a detail freak like myself.

The door casing wasn't undercut, and the flooring was scroll-cut to match the molding profile (lazy, lazy, lazy...). That means that there is no gap between the flooring and door casing, and no gap between the door jambs and the piece of flooring between them, and no gap where the maple meets the (exterior) sliding door track. At the carpet to maple transition, where I can see the end of the maple under the quarter round, there is only 1/16" gap between the maple and baseboard. So no gaps....anywhere.

I want the flooring to go under the baseboard, and I want to fix the other glaring installation shortcomings. I can't stretch the flooring obviously, which would be nice.

The question:

What would it take to remove the flooring, and reuse it somewhere else? Are there good options for removing a T&G that's nailed or glued down, keeping the flooring reusable for something else?

I don't think I have enough spare flooring (maybe 2 boxes I found in the attic?) to shift/replace the floor and increase the floor length on all sides, and then there's the problem of new boards not matching the existing wood/finish with UV exposure.

The only thing I can think to do is remove the entire floor and move it to a smaller room, or remove the floor in the kitchen and use that to correct the other larger room. Either way it would all need to get removed just to be able to shift/slide to correct the installation.

Maybe it will end up as part of my garage/shop floor, or as a vertical wall in a bedroom after some refinishing.

I would doubt it's glued down by the description.

Take to remove?

Depends on how it's fastened and how patient one wants to be in removing. A floor that's been stapled with 15 gauge crown staples will be much harder than a cleat nailed floor and you'll lose/damage more material. Being prefinished will also take more care and time. I'm going to guess you'll lose 25% in the removal.

Keep in mind, I said guess. Mileage will vary.

Sounds like fun. I'm not super concerned if there's some damage, but I'd like to reuse if possible just because that's a lot of nice maple to throw away.

What's the proper tool to remove the floor, just a nice flat prybar or trim prybar? Is there something that would speed that up significantly?