I am doing some remodeling of a room with hardwood floors. I have removed a couple of closet walls and now have a couple of gaps where the 2x4s were. I have another area where I can remove some flooring and use the boards to replace the ones with the gaps from the 2x4s. I am thinking that I may want to remove the floor from both sides of where the closet walls were and use the pieces from the other section of the floor to put long pieces in rather than just putting in 4" long pieces.

So my question is how to remove the existing pieces of floor without ripping them to shreds. The floor is 3/4" hardwood (not sure what kind). The house is a little over 100 yrs old, but this part of the floor was most likly done between the 40s - 70s. The boards are 1 5/8" wide and appear to be oak. The subfloor appears to be hardwood planks running on a diagonal to the floor joists.

Any advice on how to do remove this or pointers to articles would be great.

Phil Locy has some tips and pictures on his website---

http://members.tripod.com/philntoni/id22.htm

Well I got to the point where I was going to rip up the hardwood floor in preparation for doing the new sub floor and tile install in the bathroom. I figured I would give the controlled removal for reuse approach one more try. I decided to try a reciprocating saw with a 12 inch “wood with embedded nail” demolition blade to cut the nails from underneath. Well it turns out that this technique seems to be working very well. So it looks like Lorraine will get the "old style" hardwood floor in the bathroom after all. (I love it when I plan comes together).

So here is the technique:

The first thing I did was cut out a piece with a circular saw set to ¾” depth. This provided access to the tongue side where the nails are driven in. Next I examined the exposed tongue and located the nails that attached the piece to the floor. I then used the reciprocating saw to cut underneath the wood floor at each nail. I then used a small pry bar to gently lift and pull the piece of floor out of the tongue of the next board. I also had to put a fan in the window and open another window to suck the fumes from the tar paper out of the room. Working slowly and carefully I was able to remove the first 10 sq. ft. without ruining any of the floor boards.

I found part of a magazine being used under the floor as a shim. It appears that the floor was installed some time after 1944. I found a copyright on an ad dated 1944 and a recipe for turkey stuffing so my guess is Oct / Nov. 1944. There was one ad from Reo Motors for a Reo Speedwagon. (Who knew they weren’t just a band ) It says “Ask your Reo dealer about the government release of a limited quota of the new Reo trucks for civilian use.”

My reciprocating saw is a very old 40’s or 50’s Black and Decker HD Saber Saw.