It’s Demo Day!!!! I love Demo Day.

Realistically, there wasn’t any demo needed to start the guest bedroom makeover. But after a lot of thinking and googling, we decided it would be easiest to remove the baseboard from the wall instead of trying to paint around it.

It would have been simple enough to use a paint guard, which keeps the paint from getting the carpet. I also know that any paint I would have gotten on the carpet who have bugged me. So, I simply and carefully removed the boards.

Let me show you how easy it was.

First, I slipped in a small crow bar between the wall and the board. I then slowly pulled it towards me so I wouldn’t crack the board. If your baseboards are super tight, like mine were in some spots, slip a plaster knife between the board and the wall and use it to create enough space for the crowbar.

I am new to the construction game. I have no idea if baseboards are applied clockwise or counterclockwise or if it even matters, but in the bedroom they were installed clockwise so I removed them counterclockwise. Taking them off the opposite way they were installed, made removal much easier because in the corners the boards butted up against each other, meaning they overlapped and would have been harder to remove in the order they were installed.

I worked my way around the room until every piece was removed. I have a total of six pieces.

Next, I marked on the back of each piece and then on the wall, where they came from .

Each of these boards will be taken down to the garage and painted so I didn’t want to depend on my memory as to which piece goes where. 🙂

The final step at this point of the demo was to remove any finishing nails from the wall that had popped through the baseboard.

Using the small crowbar again, I thought I could quickly remove the nails.

Not so fast, Wendy.

Pressing the crowbar into the drywall was going to crush the drywall.

Not good.’

So what I did was place the spackling knife between the crowbar and the wall. This added some strength to the wall and prevented a hole as I removed the nail.

It worked super slick.

Please don’t judge this next blurry photo. I removed these boards by myself and had to take the photos as the process was happening.  I literally guessed where the shot would be while holding the crowbar and knife in place with one hand and taking the picture with the other.

Bahahaha.

Once the boards were off and the nails were removed, I unscrewed all of the outlet covers and filled the nail holes.

Can you tell that this wall was full of car and motorcycle posters?

Next on the list is sanding the dried spackling. Then we can start to paint and some real progress will start to happen.

I’ll be putting sneak peeks on Instagram if you want to follow along that way also!

~Wendy