Removing Baseboards

I've had a draft of this post written for a very long time. Now that I'm finally installing new baseboards, I figured I should let you know how I removed the old ones.

I'm pretty sure that the baseboards were original to the house and were pretty beat up. I was convinces they had to go... plus it helped with the floor refinishing process. I bought myself a pry bar and a good hammer and started at it. It was also good that I did this before I painted so I wouldn't mess up a new paint job. The quick and dirty description of how to remove a baseboard is: put edge of pry bar at the top of the baseboard, hammer pry bar behind baseboard, gently pry baseboard away from wall slightly (can be less than 1/2 inch), move pry bar further along the baseboard, and repeat until full baseboard is slightly away from wall, then work your way back to get it even further away from wall until you can pull whole thing out with out damaging the wall. If you try to remove the whole nail before prying the full baseboard slightly away from the wall, you risk damaging the wall behind it.

I ended up some nails left in the walls that I am having to remove now that I'm installing the new baseboards. Some of those need a little engineering ingenuity (in fact, I was told I should have been an engineer when someone saw my methods, but I'll stick with my current profession). Sometimes I've had to use a block for leverage with the hammer or pry bar (I'm pretty certain I learned that trick from Dad). I've also used interesting configurations of the hammer and pry bar to get nails out. Occasionally I've been able to use needle nose pliers to pull the nail out. If all else fails I hammer it all the way into the wall or saw it off with a small hacksaw right at the wall because it's just going to get covered by a new baseboard. I just have to be careful not to shoot a new nail into the old one. Before I install more baseboards, I'll make sure to survey old nail holes and will put a piece of painter's tape on the wall right above the nail to be careful around that spot.

SHARK BITE! The DIY, affordable way to fix copper pipes.

Apparently I'm not the only one who drills into water pipes! Thanks to a blog reader/friend, I've learned of how to fix holes in copper pipes the easy way... no soldering necessary. I'm still glad I saw what the plumber did because I would have made much more of a mess and probably would have been second-guessing myself the whole time. Here's what to do.
For humility's sake, let's put up an image of the pipe again. Yep... hole right in the middle. I did that.

If this happens to you, here is what to do...
1) Sprint to turn off the water main! (hopefully you are reading this BEFORE drilling into a pipe because if you are googling "how to fix a copper pipe" and your water main is still on, then you are going to need professional help).
2) Clean up the mess and put a towel under the pipe where the hole is.
3) Drain your system by turning on your hot and cold water faucets in the bathrooms especially in the lowest level of your house.
4) Get a pipe cutter, deburr/depth gauge tool, and shark bite push-fit coupling from your local hardware store.
5) Cut the pipe on either side of the hole no more than 2 inches long. Be patient with cutting the pipe. It may take a while.
6) This short video shows you the rest of the steps. And dude had an accent so that's extra reason to watch.

I hope this saves someone $200+ in their next plumbing emergency!