Hi everyone,
I would like to get some opinions on whether it would be worthwhile, from an economic viewpoint, to salvage some wood flooring. Here’s the situation in a nutshell: I have a contact at a real estate development company which will soon be demolishing a house that was built around 1910-1920. There are probably a couple thousand SF of wood flooring in it, I don’t know what kind of wood it is, might even just be pine, but I’m not sure. I think it would be such a waste to have the flooring end up in a dumpster, but as a not very handy 64 yr. woman, I would have to pay some labor to have it removed. The best estimate I can make from Ebay sales is that used wood flooring might go for like $2 SF. But I have no idea what kind of man hours would be involved in removing it, so I wonder if it would even be worth doing it. Does anyone out there have any experience with salvaging wood flooring, and know the degree of difficulty in doing it? Would anyone care to weigh in on the feasability of doing this?
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What do you plan on doing with it anyhow?
"[W]orth doing" is relative. Chances are that if you can't use it in your own home (because it costs more to buy new material*), then it's not worth considering.
* You don't need help making this calculation. Only you'd know how much you'd have to pay someone to remove it and what it would cost to buy the material you wanted by shopping those two variables yourself.
Unless you're trying to match an old floor somewhere it's not a good idea. Not only do you have to pay someone to remove the flooring you'll also have to have the nails removed, broken wood cut out, and the trash removed. Then the wood has to be moved and stored somewhere safe and dry. When you sell or use it it has to be moved yet again and restacked. In the end if you managed to save 75% of what you removed you'd be lucky.